<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>A Reckoning by any other name... by GenericDemon</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22891126">A Reckoning by any other name...</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/GenericDemon/pseuds/GenericDemon'>GenericDemon</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hannibal (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>AU to EP 12 S 3, Bad Psychiatry, Disturbing Themes, Dolarhyde's name isn't known yet, Dubious and Withdrawn Consent, Internalized Victim Blaming, Let's pretend like this story doesn't have plotholes like a pair of pants with too many pockets, Misunderstanding, Moving and messing around with timeline, Multi, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Poor Coping Methods, Revictimization, Unhealthy Coping, an exploration of complicated sexual trauma, bad practices, being eaten alive (dream), dialogue and events from the show/script, issues of consent, misinterpreting, relationships not tagged, retraumatizing someone as a malicious means to reach a goal, secondary revictimization, some things not tagged, terrible responses to people in bad situations, terrible situations, the brain is a terrible thing, this is not how anything should work, this is not how consent works, triggering themes, unsafe practices, zero communication</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 11:21:52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>30,145</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22891126</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/GenericDemon/pseuds/GenericDemon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p><em>They allow him his neck deep wallow through molasses thick resignation, a slow, awful approach to the idea that this is something he could've prevented, could've fought harder to stop and yet he played into it, acted the part of the forceful hand and bordered in to something merciless when he placed his palm upon the Red Dragon and pushed him down to the bedspread with all the vengeful wrath of the lamb. </em><br/> </p><p> </p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Francis Dolarhyde/Will Graham, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>98</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. The Fall</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>
  <em>"The need to quantitate has put center stage<br/>Regret, remorse, regard<br/>Crazed and calm with a sinner's psalm<br/>Memories lose their art. So I--<br/>Circle thoughts with centered eyes<br/>That stare without ever seeing<br/>But it's getting dim and just before any<br/>Reasons can be revealed, I fall."<br/>-Look Away, Dear Hunter </em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>  <em>~~~~~~~~~</em><br/>Heed the warnings and tags, this is dark in its own right and deals with a lot of potentially triggering shit in a way that may never reach a positive resolution.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>There were supposed to be snipers.</em>
</p><p>It's some latent, lingering thought that keeps trawling about the hazy folds of Will's mind. Wet and crumpled and <i>weak</i>, he can hardly form a coherent one before it's dashed against the rocks like a seagull's beak to a herring's skull.</p><p>Sharp and fast, all that fragile cartilage and bone bending and breaking under the sudden strike… Will wonders if that's how utterly brittle he felt under the Red Dragon's thumbs, clutched in those brutal fingers, twisted against meeker flesh, something softer, far more gentle in comparison to the great strength that flowed its poisonous, preternatural ichor through the beast's veins. He had been well and truly thrown against the elevator wall with all the weight of a scrawny mutt in that museum, following on the word of Hannibal once more, a strung carrot to a mule, only to find himself at the mercy of the doctor's manipulative game and its violent pawns. </p><p>It seemed even in a cell, the glass that separated Hannibal from the outside world was a mere formality. </p><p>In that hazy in-between of waking and sleeping, where seconds stretch on for light years a scene plays out before him. Will finds himself seated at the dining table of Muskrat farm in some other world adjacent and vaguely familiar, an imperfectly refracted image of the past.  </p><p>He's pinned like a specimen, strapped and forced to sit at the table, all off to the side like a delicate and pretty decoration as Hannibal consumes his less than elegant meal across the bright and warmly lit expanse of expensive mahogany. It is a desperate recreation of Hannibal's own dining room, Mason Verger seated at the opposite end. </p><p>He affords Will no attention beyond crudeness and a demeaning sense of fondness for his prospective face donor, words steeped in an ugly sort of slippery grace as Mason fumbles around consonants and syllables with all the dexterity of someone lacking proper lips. </p><p>Will can't bring himself to afford the man a reply, still caught up in the haunting sounds of a buzzing saw and the rattling, jarring sensation as it connected with the bone of his skull. All of it guided by the skilled hands of his former psychiatrist with the full intent to eat the contents inside while Will could still <em>think</em> and <em>breathe</em>.</p><p>It was Hannibal's forgiveness, identically different to Will's own in the most fitting way and identical still in the notion that both had been put on an indefinite pause through <em>extenuating</em> factors. </p><p>This time, Hannibal's disdain manifests in more than just slight smirks or that cheeky smile at Cordell's lackluster words. There is a haughty sense of jealousy, boiling beneath that skin pulled taut across his knuckles until it bleeds white as Hannibal watches with the darkening eyes of a predator lashed to a stake in the ground and left to tug on the collar until he garrotes himself with the effort. </p><p>When Will bites Cordell's cheek off, in this liminal space the attendant pins him to the table, chubby fingers smearing and catching in Will's hair caked with blood and grease. Those digits force Will cheek first into the table, grinding the bone until it creaks and his back is bent double. It's as if suddenly all the straps that held him upright in that chair-like contraption are broken, that bar across his chest once locking him in is absent. No longer bound, Will has the distinct distant feeling that he's departing ever further from freedom. </p><p>It's something that's decidedly different than <em>what</em> happened and yet it's reality stems from the ever unraveling potential for it to <em>have</em> happened. </p><p>As Mason gives a smack of his non-existent lips and a snort from his twisted piggish nose, Will kicks and pushes, the echoes of pained grunts crawling up his throat, "this is why you could never be a real doctor, Cordell--" Mason takes a long breath before his words drawl out with no particular haste, "no <em>bedside</em> manner." </p><p>Blood still slicks Will's teeth and his tongue, metallic and overwhelming in its tang, that bit of cheek flesh he'd spat out like rancid meat stares back at him, all eye level and accusing. It's judging him the same way that when he looks past it, Hannibal casts his own. </p><p>A careful restraint is found in the way Will watches Hannibal set his cutlery down and fold his free hand against the table. Warm eyes like spiced wine look upon his suffering with all the curiosity of some god to his lowly creations; a mere whimsy. </p><p>There is anger there but it is akin to the rolling brontide of distant thunder. Keen interest overshadows it like the tall, arching flames of a rampant forest fire. </p><p>Those branding hands upon Will's person change direction like the outward tug of the waves back to sea, snapping his head back until his neck strains with the movement, throat exposed and working to swallow nothing. </p><p>He's forced to look into the beady, perverse gaze of Cordell, the attendant's pupils blown wide even as that garrish bite mark bleeds its crimson notes. All of it offset by the too wide smile of a man who's only directive is irreverent pain and pleasure. </p><p>"Don't hurt his face now." Mason punctuates his words with a rattling laugh that borders on an excited choke, "That pretty mug's been sullied enough." </p><p>Like an obedient dog, Cordell releases the back of Will's head with a slight thrust forward. It forces his chin to drop down against his chest for a moment, lolling there, a dazed sense of collectiveness until Will scrapes his sensibilities together and looks to Mason's form, all backlit and shaking with a lack of stability to the world. </p><p>An odd twinkle reflects proudly in Mason's eyes that is not at all reflected in the stiff, grafted skin of his faceless skull, "You're free to play with <em>everything</em> else though." </p><p>Will's breath catches like a hook in his throat, sharp and painful his lips stretch thin until they part with a shaky exhale coupled with a violent toss of his head. No words leave. At least, not with any coherence, at this point it's just desperate, animalistic noises pushed from the quickening breaths of his form. </p><p>Trying to push away, Will finds himself locked in place once more, frozen and grafted to a chair he doesn't remember sitting in as a shadow looms over him with all the intention of devouring him whole. A large, cold hand curls against the back of his skull. Another drifts down the length of his throat, pushing against the outer cartilage of his larynx. </p><p>Too sharp nails carve a path through Will's skin, sending a slew of sensation down the length of his body. A violent writhing like a snake takes up root in his stomach as one shoulder twists closer and the other pulls away, his back arching as haunted gasps flee his parted lips.</p><p>The hands depart, leaving their lingering sense of uncleanliness upon him like greasy fingerprints to glass. Smudged and imperfect, Will hunches in on himself, refusing to meet that looming shadow's gaze. He's afraid those eyes will never leave the burrowing depths of his psyche. </p><p>It doesn't occur to him that the room has lost all light, a backdrop of darkness surrounding the dim, elegant glow of a table that no longer belongs to the Verger family. Filled to the brim with exotic dishes in various stages of decay, glittering pomegranates and antlers jut up from between the gaps in the rancid banquet. </p><p>The sound of hooves and the hot snort of breath against the back of Will's neck ring out with the authority of a snapping rope through the crisp air. He blinks against the sound, staring at his hands in his lap, they are bathed in the inky darkness of something similar in viscosity to blood in the non-existent light. </p><p>Something moves closer, that shadow shifts and though he cannot feel the physical presence of gripping claws, Will bares his teeth. A distinct warning to the curl of his lips that flash the stained ivory and tell a tale of continued violence in exchange for future transgressions. </p><p>But Will's teeth click around nothing, loud and popping against each other when a vise grip on his shoulders lifts him bodily into the air. He kicks and thrashes, squirming and hissing with all the combined energy of a pissed off weasel in a larger carnivore's grip. </p><p>His back meets the table with a resounding <em>thud</em>, a crack and clatter like a gunshot through the air as his eyes are forced wide open and every iota of air in his lungs rushes from him all at once. It leaves him gasping like a fish, staring up at the overarching nothingness above. </p><p>His hands fist against platters piled high with pomegranate seeds, their red juice mingling with the dark blood in a pink stain that creeps up his forearms, their small seeds biting against his skin as he clutches and pushes, trying to crawl backwards. Something large finds its way onto the set mahogany with him, inching its way closer as Will inches himself back. </p><p>It's an odd sightless tango that ends when palms wrap about his ankles and claws find his heel, snapping in to his achilles like the bite of an alligator. A yelp punches from Will at the sensation, nerves igniting along the back of his calf as the tendon is severed.</p><p>He's dragged back. All the progress he made undone in the symphonic crash of silver and garland dishes against tile, cutlery and wine glasses tumbling off in the wake of Will's desperation, his free limbs kicked and swung without direction as his nails find the grain of the wood and catch in the tiny grooves with no avail. </p><p>Something sharp and sinewy crawls up the length of Will's body and everywhere it drags against his own it feels like the sting of an insect. </p><p>It's a hornet's hot venom coursing through his veins with all the fiery ferocity nature intended of it. It only grows in severity when a bony knee forces apart his legs and drags up between his thighs in a caress that's far too tender. </p><p>Will opens his eyes to the sight of a familiar monster above him. Bedelia's words echo ubidden, sweet and slow, they simmer against his ear drums as Will reaches a hand up through that tar in his bone marrow that threatens to pin him down, keep his elbow trapped against the rotting wood and never let him escape-- </p><p>
  <em>But do you ache for him?</em>
</p><p>His fingertips meet the hot flesh of Hannibal's cheek, fanning out until his entire palm melds with the skin beneath it. </p><p>
  <em>"Yes..."</em>
</p><p>Will's answer is definitive now where it had been entirely absent in Dr. Du Maurier's office. It's whispered like curling smoke against Hannibal's lips, so soft and wistful it's hardly a word at all. It's more of a breath shared between an entity, no clear demarcation where one begins and the other ends; all blurry lines and the caress of naked flesh. </p><p>But the encroaching kiss is stemmied by reluctance, a brief mingling of breath before its withdrawn and Will tries to chase it, eyes fluttering closed in a way that looks almost as if he's on the verge of falling asleep. </p><p>Any tenderness makes a swift, abrupt exit with the snare of a hand around his throat, thumb dove straight into his windpipe, forcing his head back down and his mouth open with great gasps of air. It's a strangely disturbing sound in his own ears and with wide eyes Will watches the mirage shatter to reveal the tarnished inky skin of the stagman beneath.</p><p>It all crumbles away in to fine dust and erotic cruelty as those long fingers grip Will tighter, antlers stretching up above him as those dead eyes look down. Even in that moment, fear does not find himl. </p><p>Every slice through malleable skin is like an electric slide of pleasure, pain knows no language here beyond the barest afterthought, broken words and muffled groans stuttered from between a crushed windpipe are the only sounds as the monster rips into his flesh, guts him intimately and with surgical precision. A blinding sense of desire and kanting want fill him to the brim until Will is left writhing atop the table, bashing against all its upturned and remaining contents as the stagman hunches over him. Only its bruising grip on both hips holds him steady as those antlers cut and scrape their way across his chest, dig into his neck, and hook under his chin. </p><p>Its nose firmly buried in that newly gaping smile of Will's stomach, it takes the first bite of his viscera. A sound like the squelch of wet rubber between teeth plays out in tandem with the hitching ring of mounting pleasure, echoed only by rapidly quickening breaths. Will's fingers find themselves sliding along the base of those antlers, gripping that leathery skin beneath blunt nails as he forces its face further down, further inside, as he begs to be eaten alive with all the desperation of someone who's on the verge of coming undone. </p><p> </p><p>A cascade of water drowns the scene in a torrent of fast moving waves. </p><p>Will sputters awake, weakly spitting and coughing up the water that had found its way past his limp lips. </p><p>"Are you alright?" </p><p>He peels his eyes open, blurry forms coming in to focus until he realizes he's laid out on a bed. A nearly naked figure lingers in the darkness at the foot, hunched slightly with a icy gaze that's surprisingly unmasked. </p><p>The voice is soft, shy in its quality, echoes of Hannibal Lecter calling this killer a <em>shy boy</em> dance like wind chimes in Will's ringing ears. </p><p>His eyes track down the form until they meet the metal flash of a silenced pistol reflected in the low light. On instinct Will tenses up, nostrils flaring as his breath hitches with a remaining wheeze in his chest, caught on the weak coattails of a post-chloroform haze. </p><p>The Red Dragon moves closer, almost crouching now at eye level, an animalistic approach to his rolling steps. The dragon stops a few feet away from the bed, the cleft in his lip now visible as those icy eyes alight against Will's skin, take in the quick pattern of breaths and the quality of <em>fear</em> there. </p><p>"Breathe deeply." The voice is soft once more, a deep and slow timbre that is enunciated with great care around the confines of a speech impediment. "Do you think you can sit up?... Try to sit up." </p><p>Will shimmies himself up the headboard, wrinkling the finely laid sheets as he pushes against them. Finally finding a more upright position he lets his hands rest against his thighs, keeping them out in the open; non threatening in the presence of his captor. </p><p>Words do not find his tongue, and Will's reluctant to try them even if they did. He waits for the first word to be had, opting for the security of knowing he's not dead yet and that pistol is decidedly <em>not</em> aimed at him; he's not too keen on changing that with the wrong muttered sentence. </p><p>In the yawning span made by their mutual silence, he thinks this isn't how he pictured it. A whole SWAT team at his back while Fredrick Chilton had a few paltry agents, far easier pickings to be found in the latter choice, but Will had to recognize and literally confront that terrible idea that the dragon thought himself capable of <em>anything</em>. And this was anything.  </p><p>He has to imagine that Jack is losing his collective mind somewhere, barking and snarling at any officer in sight, wondering how in the hell they let a killer slip out right under their noses. It's impressive really, more a testament to the dragon's capabilities than the FBI's shortcomings, it's a bold and dangerous move and it has a great deal of festering <em>desire</em> coating it's ugly, hasty edges. </p><p>The man wanted to stop and yet the dragon on his back didn't. </p><p>Now it was a matter of fostering that divide or plucking it away entirely. A curious part of Will wants to see how far this tale goes, how many ways it can be spun and knowing full well that at each end there lies some reckoning, a <em>becoming</em> that begins and ends with Hannibal Lecter.</p><p>"Your face is closed to me." </p><p>The words draw Will from the narrowing confines of his mind, a curious blink finding its way on his face as he studies the dragon a moment. "If I can see you, you can see me." </p><p>There is a sort of amusement that plays across the Red Dragon's face, a momentary thing that has the dragon pressing in closer yet maintaining a distinguished distance. "You think you understand, don't you?" </p><p>The words are a bit quicker, a rushing hiss that surrounds them as they reach Will and if not for the understanding that the beast was momentarily stowed away beneath the man, Will would have flinched. </p><p>Instead, he conjures up the words in his mind that need to be said, spilled from between dried lips he moistens them with a single lick before speaking, <em>"I understand that blood and breath are only elements undergoing change to fuel your Radiance."</em></p><p>A brief pause is all it takes for the dragon to incline his head further, eyes narrowing slightly in a silent beckon for Will to finish the thought. </p><p>"Hannibal…" he draws the name out, shaky in its hesitance as he gauges the dragon's reaction, "said those words." </p><p>"To me." Will clarifies with a certain finality, as if that's all that needs to be said. </p><p>The dragon's brow crinkles, a great furrow takes up residence on his pale forehead, blue eyes darkening and one corner of his lip tugs down in distaste, "I tried to share with Lecter..." </p><p>"And Lecter betrayed me." Again, the words are careful, chosen for their brevity and their quality in lieu of the slightly lisping slur with which they enter the air.</p><p>That smiling scar across Will's stomach smarts and twists and he pulls a hand up to thumb at the edge of it. Pressing against the tissue through layers of clothing, it reminds him hazily of something he can't quite recall, a <em>dream</em>, a sense of animalistic pleasure that doesn't seem so far off from the pain. "He betrayed me, too." </p><p>Will's words are softer than he intended, far softer than the dragon's own, as if he's wielding a dull blade of compassion and empathy, poking and prodding the other to see if he's susceptible and hoping for the most pliant results. </p><p>"I would like to share." </p><p>And perhaps it worked, Will muses, a dark hint of humor and trepidation there as his own head tilts to mirror the dragon's. The Red Dragon creeps closer, lifting one leg and one arm in tandem as he crawls onto the foot of the bed, a proverbial monitor lizard across a warm, rocky ledge. </p><p>"You shared with Reba." Will's voice drops to barely more than a whisper. </p><p>One hand alights on the bed, right beside Will's clothed ankle, the mattress dipping down under the weight and Will can only sit and stare at the indents formed by the dragon's curled, claw like hand in the sheets. The other hand lifts, nails dirtied and stained with photo exposure fluid, they cut across the air and make a swift landing on the outside of Will's knee.</p><p>The approach halts with those words, a lifted palm drawn back to the dragon's bare chest. Those fingers flex and curl in the air, twisting as their owner stares at them in transfixed awe before they unfurl and find their place back beside Will's leg, bare wrist brushing pant leg.</p><p> "I shared with Reba a little, in a way she could survive--" the beast creeps ever closer, teeth flashing behind lips that curl and jump with the formation of words that leave in a breathy, grinding growl, "she had one flash of my <em>glory</em>."</p><p>The dragon looms over him in a manner that is far more predatory than sexual, and yet its charged in every erotic manner possible. Will is  straddled by a being who could snap his spine, those great shoulders heaving with the deep sweeping breaths of the dragon as it emerges from its latent slumber, mingling with the man, prompting awe to be driven from all who gazed upon the beast. </p><p>"Why haven't you changed her?" He gazes up, throat working and clicking with a brief swallow as he entertains the idea of <em>awe</em>, of <em>sharing</em>, of being <em>changed</em> by the Great Red Dragon, he thinks even if he were inclined to fight, there would be little choice in the matter. If Reba had made the man reconsider, he hopes that there is something left of him to stop this now before Will's heart gives out in his chest and he finds himself under the dragon's brutal hands, broken and changed as he'd <em>changed</em> those families. </p><p>The dragon doesn't afford him an answer for a considerable stretch of time, the only sound shared between them is harsh breathing.</p><p>"I choose not to change her." The dragon looms closer, it's some awful parody of an encroaching kiss, it's a detailed scrutiny, a study of Will's face, of his eyes, of the way he cranes his head away but does not shutter them from the world. "I thought, 'Dare I? Of course I do.' I'm <em>stronger</em> than the Dragon now." </p><p>The rumbling baritone of the dragon's voice practically cuts through Will at this proximity, an intimate closeness that parallels what they'd shared briefly in that FBI staged 'hideout' back in Washington. </p><p>The Red Dragon had held him close there as he'd pressed a chloroform soaked cloth to Will's lips and nose, both of them collapsed against the wall at the scuffle's end, the dragon winning out <em>always</em> in that strange lover's embrace. </p><p>There's one last scrap to cling on to, one last ditch effort to avoid the subsequent becoming, the changing, that which terrifies Will and captivates him, keeps him from attempting to reach for the nearest blunt object and smash it over the dragon's head, it's what stays his teeth and his jaw when he entertains the thought of latching it around that exposed throat and ripping it out. </p><p>"I'm just an annoyance to you." Will speaks with an air of determination, thinking maybe if he's convicted enough it will become truth. "Hannibal Lecter is who you <em>need</em> to change." </p><p>The dragon makes no rebuttal, and the silent staring worries Will far more than the growling or the snarling ever could. It's too calculative.</p><p>A shuddering flinch finally over takes Will's frame when the dragon surges forward. It's a release of taut potential energy that leaves Will smacking the back of his skull against the headboard, hands pushing with all their combined strength as his knee bends in an attempt to slam into the dragon's groin. </p><p>Will expects the dragon to eat his face, rip the flesh from the bone like some human shaped lizard, all poisoned breath and sharp fangs. He expects those hands to wrap around his collar bone and his pelvis, bend him backwards until his back gives like wet cardboard and he'll be showing up to every investigation in a wheelchair. It is unexpected but altogether not surprising, when the dragon kisses him. </p><p>It's such a violent thing that it leaves Will afraid the dragon might tear his lips from his mouth, twisted peaks and valleys of ivory caught around the delicate flesh of a lower lip. They pull until it starts to tug at the gums of Will's teeth, the taste and warmth of blood blossoming across dull taste buds.</p><p>It tastes real. So unlike the now paling comparison of Will's twisted fever dream that he's starting to recall with more clarity. </p><p>It echoes it, in all it's brutal and frightening reality, it's a nightmarish desire laid bare but with the wrong ink. The wrong hand to guide the strokes and the curls of each letter.</p><p>And it leaves Will <em>confused</em>, a keening whine like a kicked dog leaving him at the sheer sensation of it. He's clutching for more, gasping for air, pushing away, floundering and feeling a sense of detached infidelity, of fleeting wrongness that he overlooks again and again and <em>again</em>.</p><p>He realizes that giving in would be akin to burying his prepackaged life… if it wasn't already buried the moment he sat by Molly in her hospital bed and all he could see were shards of mirror in her eyes and caught between her lips. </p><p>His mind blazes a path like a burning train on iron tracks, it analyzes every moment without mercy, every tense of musculature beneath his hands every growl, every rasping breath every look that's barely exchanged and still no more words leave either of them. </p><p>It's animalistic, pure in its initial rutting desperation, it is the absence of clarity or concise consent; it is unobstructed by moral values, free of judgement, it just <em>is</em> </p><p>With the way the dragon fumbles and clumsily barrels on, Will can easily assume the only sexual experience the killer has ever had was with Reba, the Woman Clothed in the Sun to the Great Red Dragon. </p><p>And if that's the case, Will has to wonder where he fits in and if this is to be a moment of <em>sharing</em>, then perhaps it is only fair it goes both ways. </p><p>There's an animalistic, hungry quality to the way that Will slots his mouth against the dragon's, teeth clacking against each other so violently that it sends pain up through his skull. There's little give in dragon's domination but any opening is answered by Will catching the other's lip between his teeth, fighting the urge to bite all the way through until ivory clicks against ivory and he's severed the muscle. </p><p>It's soaked in sin. It mirrors what Will sees behind his closed eyes, that dining room, it's sweet and rotten scent, the feeling of teeth, of tearing, of blood slicked with sweat as skin glides across fevered skin. </p><p>A frustrated growl reaches him, forcing his eyes open and breaking the illusion so effectively that Will lifts his hands from the dragon's soaked skin. </p><p>Will stares at the appendages, skin gathered under his own nails where he'd scraped them with no mercy up the dragon's tattooed back. Drawing the limbs back to his body, Will's breathing is heated, his own bare back stinging as he hunches forward, claw marks like deep furrows left where he can't seem them.</p><p>Every inch of skin feels far too hot despite the fact he's wearing far fewer layers than he arrived with.</p><p>Blown pupils track the torn remains of clothing until Will spots his coat, sweater and flannel in torn disarray upon the floor. That flimsy pair of spandex underwear the dragon had been wearing are there as well. The thought worries him far less than it should, there's a detached sense of self, a feeling like he's drifting in a cold stream, his body and mind departing from each other with a detectable red shift.</p><p>The Red Dragon himself lingers, sitting back on his haunches, weight digging into Will's thighs. It traps Will there, as if he had suddenly developed second thoughts and acquired the ability to act on them in any tangible way. </p><p>Watching with a sense of reservation, it seems uncertainty is at war in the dragon's eyes, in the growl on his lips and the hand clutched to the side of the dragon's head, cupped over his ear as if to stave out some noise, some snarling whisper. </p><p>Will watches with the stare of someone witnessing their slow approaching end, a deer caught in the headlights of a car a mile away, mind screaming for limbs to move but nothing ever gives. The dragon meets Will's eyes, dark shadows cast over bleeding lips as he tilts that shaved head down and rolls his painted shoulders, a shivering shudder rippling through his frame. </p><p>An automatic sense of fight or flight overtakes Will but it's quickly stampeded into fawn, demanding he stay limp, pliant and open in the face of such a ravenous, destructive creature. </p><p>"It is your nature to do one thing correctly." The dragon's words are the loudest he's ever spoken in Will's presence, thunderous in quality and without mercy, "Before me, you <em>rightly</em> tremble." </p><p>The dragon leans down until his bared teeth nearly brush the side of Will's face, and just the sensation of hot air against hypersensitive skin makes Will shudder, trembling as the dragon's prophetic words dictate. </p><p>He feels the indelicate slide of incisors down his jawline before the next words are pressed from the rumbling belly of the beast, gravely and hoarse they lack that tell tale slur or lisp, "But fear is not what you owe me." </p><p>Will tucks his head against his chin, trying to fend off the haunting sensation of a predator's teeth so close to his neck, a warning chuff pressed past clenched teeth. Flat fingers fist in Will's hair a heartbeat later and the cartilage of his ear is painfully yanked along with it, forcing him to expose the jumping vein of his jugular, that junction where neck joins shoulder. </p><p>"You owe me <b>awe</b>." The words are practically <em>howled</em>, painful and loud. As soon as they enter the air, they are cut off with the puncturing force of canines driven through Will's flesh followed by the disturbingly painful clamp of all the dragon's teeth through the sinew and muscle of his shoulder. </p><p>Instantly Will kicks and bucks, beating the base of his palms and his knuckles against the back of the dragon's neck. He rips at the skin of that tense neck, shouting and growling and gnashing his teeth against empty air as those terrible incisors tear into him as if he's something to be marked. </p><p>The dragon <em>bites</em>, and Will knows just how much having seen the bodies he left in his gracious wake, only this time the dragon had no need to put on those fake gnarled teeth, not when the man and him were stronger as one. Will isn't quite sure in this pain ridden moment if he's fortunate for that small mercy. </p><p>"St…" It's the first syllable he's stuttered since the onslaught of their joint becoming, the shocking, electricity of the bite leaves Will shaking and frustrated in its wake, anger and desperation overcoming him in a way it hadn't at first, "<b>stop</b>." </p><p>The dragon doesn't relent, seeming to only bear down harder, as if trying to prove something to the man at his mercy. At this rate, he'll tear away a chunk of flesh and Will latches onto the first thing that comes to mind, fumbling for the proverbial latch that'll snap open the lizard's jaw without really knowing if it'll make him bite harder. </p><p>Will's hand slides it's quaking way down the dragon's back, nails gliding there in the farce of some lover's embrace as he blindly finds the man's hip. He traces a line from the jut of his pelvis to the inside of the iliac crest, finding that wrinkly junction where the thigh connects. Stuttering breathes over the dragon's shoulder Will's fingers trail further in, expecting to be stopped before he reached the journey's end but those claws are firmly grasped on the headboard above Will's head, the dragon's back bowed as he worked to gnaw on the flesh in that ivory grasp. </p><p>A particularly vicious tug from the dragon elicits a startled shout from Will that tapers off into a stuttered growl. Temple jumping, he works his jaw to the point of a painful grind and his eyes lock on to the space over the shoulder that threatens to smother his view of the world. Like a vengeful and pleasant retribution the backs of Will's knuckles grace the tense inside of the dragon's thigh, muscle rippling and working there beneath the surface as his fingers find themselves coiling around the heated, stiff skin of that erotic flesh between the dragon's legs. </p><p>The response is immediate, as if he's just thrown the dragon into an overflowing bathtub with a plugged in toaster. The jaws relent their hold and Will can almost sag in relief, shaky exhale attempting to push from his chest if not for the very sudden shift that overtakes him with the quiet dissipation of such shocking pain. It returns to that carnal drive that once hummed between them at that first forceful kiss. </p><p>Still, Will can't figure out which he'd prefer, both are going to burn a hole right through him as if he's hot wax, it's just a matter of which scars he's willing to wear. In the moment, in the heat and the slick white pleasure of it, this will seem like the better choice until every drop of serotonin leeches from his brain. </p><p>A strong grasp finds Will's wrist, blood dripping from the dragon's chin to land heavy and hot on Will's exposed stomach, only to roll and collect where pants still hug his hips and the red disappears into the confines of dark fabric. Each drop between them sends a flash of violent arousal through Will's midsection, roiling and dark in its desire as it mingles with the aftershocks of pulsing pain that ricochets notes down the expanse of his shoulder blade. </p><p>It's making the fact that the dragon is straddling Will all the more uncomfortable a feeling, his hips threatening to push themselves up of their own accord for just a taste of extra friction. </p><p>Will is halted in his actions to try and get the dragon off, a mindless and numb set of jerking and twisting motions that effectively put the biting to a halt, they had worked like some kind of pleasure inducing shock collar, it'd stopped the biting habit just as it begun and it's certainly put the dragon on pause. Uncertainty has Will's eyes flickering down to the space between their arched forms. Their foreheads nearly touch now as they bow their bleeding backs in mirrors of each other. </p><p>Still the dragon looms larger than him, more powerful and commanding but with Will's hand where it is, there's a sense of shared responsibility now, a shifting dynamic, a sliding scale of domination versus the dominated. </p><p>If Will is to be at the dragon's mercy, then he is to be the lamb with all its righteous, biblical wrath. </p><p>"Don't…" The dragon's words are soft once more, that shyness taking over as the beast retreats from the overwhelming interruption, or maybe there is a realization that this will not be some simple transmutation, that changing Will Graham is not what was intended but has already been set in motion, a runaway boulder gaining speed with no signs of slowing. </p><p>And for Will, he thinks not of the dragon and his form, or the man whose skin it wears, he imagines some other beast beneath his hands, beneath that gentle caress he places upon a stubbled cheek. Will shushes the pained, panicked whimpers of the lips before him in a cooing hush and with a gentle kiss, far gentler than the first one they shared. So delicate in it's approach it could hardly be considered a kiss at all, more of a brush, a breath against the dragon's trembling mouth and hushed words.  </p><p>That hand which halted Will's lifts with such hesitance that the last finger lingers for a few long heartbeats before finally departing. It is the only acceptance Will takes, even if it is more steeped in helplessness than proffered consent, they're both riding the lines of something dangerous, entirely dubious in nature and destructive in its wake. The world would be made witness to it, one damning way or another. </p><p>"Shhh…" Will whispers against those lips, wordless and hushed, trying to obscure the sounds coming from those opposite him lest the delusion be shattered. He lets his hand fall from that warm cheek, nails scraping the skin behind the shell of that delicate ear as he closes his eyes and presses closer, feeling rather than seeing, seizing control in a sudden lapse of it. </p><p>If it's morally right to do so, Will doesn't particularly take note of it, extreme acts of cruelty call for high levels of empathy after all. And is it cruel to want to survive this? </p><p>Will's hand slots along that hollow space in the dragon's collarbone, and with relative ease he pushes him back first on to the bedspread, both their feet now tangled at the headboard. Their roles are swiftly reversed, as Will works to tug sounds from the man like he's playing an instrument. </p><p>The dragon's hands fist in the sheets, ripping through the fabric with ease as that power is mitigated, left to rise and fall with each stroke, each palm that makes sinful passage and twists at the end to gather a breathy sound from those lips that once sought to curl and tear at Will. Fingers trail through hair that's too short, a voice that's too deep, a hitched rumble that doesn't match the one Will wants to hear but he forges onward, intending to finish off what had been set in motion the moment he woke here. </p><p>For a long while he's teaching the dragon, guiding the man in his motions, changing him. Will imbues him with sweet, sodomic knowledge, the lamb to the beast, and it's hard to remember which one is meant to be the devil, who's hand driven in to and across heated flesh belongs to that of a monster. </p><p>There is a moment, when Will tugs the dragon's head back and keeps an arm curled around the back of that tense neck like the hot caress of a serpent. His hips cease their tantric roll as he chances a look up, almost expecting to see someone standing there. </p><p>Mouth hung open with heavy pants, Will gazes across the length of the room, the soft click of an old film reel rolling suddenly enters his periphery thoughts and it takes a moment for his eyes to catch up. </p><p>There's a camera.</p><p>The thought sticks like used fly paper in his brain, clinging to the walls and threatening to chase out the blissful, unabashed reproach of their sin. Whatever inkling of curiosity found this moment so appealing backpedals with all the force of a cat stepping into a cold pond. Will retracts his hands as if they've been set on a hot stove, shaking them out and flexing them as he rears up in a straddle, the dragon's hips still kiss the very inside of his thighs, slotted hot and sweaty and <em>heavy</em> against Will's skin, more importantly and most devastatingly it's the dragon <em>inside</em> of him that has him panicking.  </p><p>The pressure turns into an aching stab that has Will rising up on his knees, hands reaching behind him for any surface that he can find a semblance of leverage to hoist himself off. </p><p>The whites of his eyes flash as his pupils roll, they catch the glint of the camera lense again, and it's like seeing the tapetum lucidum of eyes lurking in the brush. It sends Will tumbling headfirst into a frenzy, realization curdling in his gut as it tightens its nauseous grip.</p><p>It forces wheezing breaths from Will's chest, strangled protests to no one in particular when the ability to speak is whisked away by the sensation that something's lodged in his throat. The unforgiving, relentless sensation of white hot pleasure, pulses like a clenching fist lodged in his bowels and loins. Each shift, each struggle of Will's to dismount only coaxes it further, and it slows his progress so gravely that he finds himself lurching forward when a particularly unwise decision to move backwards knicks the desperate nerves of his prostate. </p><p>His hands find themselves braced against the dragon's chest of their own accord a wordless cry twisting bruised lips as Will's legs abruptly lose all coordination beyond the ability to twitch. The most damning thing of all, is his first and only coherent thought when the star shaped fog of ecstasy withdraws its clammy, obsessive hands. </p><p>Will feels the shift beneath his palms, the warning signs in the <em>pop</em> and <em>crack</em> of joints and tendons as the dragon reasserts itself, refills it's vessel with an audible creak and groan as it becomes <em>Great</em> once more.</p><p>There is a certain lack of comprehension in Will's mind as two hands encircle his wrists and he's forced on to his back without proper care or pretense. A bruising, tearing stretch to both his outsides and his insides as arms are ensnared in one preternaturally strong grip and forced over his head, they are pinned like the dried wings of a butterfly. His vaseline slicked fingers twist against each other to try and find relief from the bone crushing pressure. They're more slippery and messy than an oiled pig and something about that thought puts an empty smile on Will's face. </p><p>He can only be glad that he has that small mercy, petroleum-based lubricant a saving grace in the dragon's own workshop. Dark and mirthful, he thinks that perhaps it saved his own ass, quite literally. </p><p>And it is in this refusal to come to terms with his reality that at the end of it all, will leave him so dissatisfied and frustrated with the outcome, unable to cope because denial keeps chomping at his heels and leading him away.</p><p>At this point it's just a matter of endurance, all sweetness gone, intimacy tossed to the changing winds as the howling tremble of a hurricane arrives to shore. This is absent of humanity, absent of compassion in that bruising, rhythmic roil. It is the violent rutting of a beast. </p><p>There's a point between shutting his eyes and opening them again that Will finds himself pressed face first into the mattress. His head practically swims in the plush confines of a pillow with how hard he buries it into the forgiving surface.  </p><p>He can do little more than fist the sheets, tug that fabric towards his own chest as his jaw screams from the pressure with which he clenches it. Any more pressure and he'll certainly crack something. All of his breathless pants are forced from his nostrils and between bared teeth, hissing and loud, they come so fast it sounds as if he's hyperventilating, he feels far too much like a panting bitch in heat as each space between brutal thrusts is filled with a slurred plea. </p><p>There's a hand pressed in to the middle of his back, digits pushed into the knobs of Will's vertebrae, bending his spine, pushing him down until the mattress can give no more, but it's the only hand on him. The dragon doesn't touch his hips, he doesn't threaten to snap the weakest parts of his pelvis under those cataclysmic fingers. He doesn't even threaten to suffocate Will in the sweat damp fabric of the pillow. </p><p>Every action that Will takes to force his hips up higher and shove his nose further into the down is of his own feral volition, head turned to the side as the muscles in his neck strain against the skin, his veins stand out as readily as the marks the clawing and the biting have left behind. </p><p> <em>See.</em></p><p>Will hears the violent hiss of a word around the aggressive pound of blood in his ears. It makes his fists tighten, nails aching where they tangle and catch on the threads of snapping fabric, his knee hitches up higher in its journey across the cotton seas. It finds its treasure in the way that enough room is made for a hand to drift between Will's legs and a strangled shout is finally punched from his chest. Desperate gasps answering its wake as curses and growls quickly fill the lingering gaps as the beast continues regardless of the fact that Will's chased his own fulfillment. </p><p>The sounds put a pause to the dragon's relentless movement and Will lets a snarl overtake his features, back arching up against the palm that presses down.</p><p>He's so close to the bluff's edge that to be dangled before it was a stinging and profound injustice, a betrayal he intended to rectify on his own behalf. </p><p>When the dragon sets the pace again, it's lost to Will by the second thrust. Every fiber of his being tenses up like the creak of a large ship's hull, bending as it crests a wave only for the energy to be released, boneless and breathtaking as the bow cuts through and the vessel bottoms out in the trough. </p><p>Sensation beyond a tasteless, soundless, echoing slate of white is lost to him until he blinks back into the world, eyes blurred with quietly shed tears as he re-enters reality. Gasping and blinking, he takes his first full breath, chest expanding and shoulders hitching as his body continues to quake. He is baptised, born on to the world and all its Glory for the second time.</p><p>Overstimulation and pain shocks his nerves in tandem with the physical rocking of his frame, a back and forth toss of his body like a rag doll, that dragon's hand now pressed like a damning brand against his spine. He can do little more than turn his head as far as the vertebrae will allow. A smile quaking like a tree before the wrath of a storm graces Will's lips and the barest of laughs tumbles forth. </p><p>Awe is the only emotion with which to describe his brief lapse in all thought and agency. When Will stares up at that looming form, that dragon hunched over the length of his back, a snarl pressed across its splitting lips as it ducks its head and shuts its eyes, he knows that he's owed the Great Red Dragon what it demands, <em>awe</em>, a great and terrible gift. </p><p>A consolation prize for a satiated curiosity, a blessed, animalistic sharing, to pathe the way for a <em>Becoming</em>.</p><p>Like the darkening flicker of a bad reel of film, the dragon's continued coital bliss trades for the image of that stoic stagman overhead, until finally the image focuses. It sharpens before that final blink and settles into a mirage that is hauntingly close to a psychiatrist trapped in a glass cage miles away. </p><p> </p><p>Will shuts his eyes and lets himself succumb to something like a state of unconsciousness. </p><p>He doesn't know if it's a mere few minutes or hours, but finally he blinks and there is sight and sound once more, sensation like a deep pounding ache across his sacrum and up his spine, it nearly drives him to curl into the fetal position if not for the familiar smell that tickles his nostrils on each inhale.</p><p>It's the smell of smoke and it takes him altogether too long to realize the room he's in is burning. All of the dragon's relics, his camera, his twisted dentures, that wide and unfilled ledger, every lasting and physical trauma is being eaten up in the wake of unfiltered destruction. Heady, hot and glowing, it burns brighter than everything and Will's caught up in it. </p><p>He clambers to his feet, limbs weak and boneless but only for a moment as pain grips him with an icy hold, stemming from the base of his tailbone to the bite on his shoulder. Adrenaline finds itself arriving late to the party but it is no less welcome, smearing away the pain behind layers of artificial and chemical numbness, it whisks away the limp Will would otherwise have to his step. </p><p>His clothes are useless, tattered things acting as no more than kindle on the floor and he has little time to find anything else than the sheets of the bed. He gathers the blanket that comes most easily to his desperate tugs and gathers it around his shoulders. </p><p>One corner of it clapped over his mouth and nose, he hurries from the room, only taking pause at the threshold to watch the flames lick across that disturbed bedspread. He takes even greater satisfaction in watching the highly flammable reels of film ignite as the temperature skyrockets and stray sparks start to fly. </p><p>Will exits, shaky as a newborn deer on to the front porch, barefoot and exposed like a particularly nasty splinter in someone's thumb. An arriving parade of emergency vehicles greets him, screaming across the gravel, some even skidding slightly with the force at which they brake and turn. It brings him little comfort to have those lights glare across his retinas and chase a pounding headache from his skull. </p><p>Raising his arm to block out the light, he squints his eyes, attempting to make out the figures that rush about, the firm hands of a firefighter find his shoulders as she guides him away from the building, and he tugs the blanket about himself further, his eyes transfixed ahead of him even as she tries to examine him for symptoms of smoke inhalation. </p><p>He's swiftly passed off to a nearby medical technician when she makes little progress. It's a blur of sound and colors, sensations that dull in comparison to what existed in the now inferno. </p><p>It has the odd air of a loss, he has the absurd feeling he should have left that building in mourning. </p><p>Questions rattle off in his ear as they guide him to the back of an ambulance, he can feel the distinct shift in their approach when the fluorescent interior lighting of the vehicle hits him. How they hover further away, talk softer, move slower and exchange looks around him, they tread on eggshells where once they stepped sure-footed and confident. The more looming male figures are ushered away and it ignites a lingering sense of anger in the dry kindling at the bottom of his belly. </p><p>It sets a frown on his face and a shadow over his eyes that he has yet to put to a physical voice with a mask pressed over his lips and nose, inhaling pure oxygen until the desire to cough his lungs up has dissipated. </p><p>"Can you tell me your name?" </p><p>Will lets the mask fall, sucking on the smoke tinged air once more, it stings the inside of his lungs but forces no further coughs from him. Clearing his throat with a painful sound he licks his lips and tracks his eyes up the dark uniform in front of him.</p><p>"...Will Graham." </p><p>A nitrile gloved hand hovers in his vision as the technician asking him questions reaches with an obvious slowness towards Will, probably to palpate the visible and garrish bruises on his skin, feel for obvious fractures and the symptoms of shock. </p><p>She doesn't want to startle him and the thought is odd in the way it metastasizes. It grows into an expanding ball of discomfort, nausea caught in its exponential doubling as Will leans away from even the potential of touch, eyes lingering on the extended hand as if it is an electric eel. </p><p>The appendage retracts with a vicious speed and the technician tries to mask the pity in her eyes with a failing sense of neutrality. </p><p>"Alright, Mr. Graham." Her voice is all forced lightness in the face of her dark assumptions and it drives him to retreat further into himself to escape it. "Do you know where you are right now?" </p><p>He looks up then, a bit startled by the naivety of the question. He realizes upon meeting the dark eyes in front of him that she's working through the script the best way she knows how. A rookie then, and with the unfortunate luck of being the most non threatening in stature and voice alike.</p><p>"N…" Will tries to get the word out, jaw seizing around the consonant before the vowel can fall out, licking his lips he scrunches his eyes in a hard blink and tries again, "No." </p><p>She catches her error on the tail end of Will's stuttered refusal, her shoulders tensing up ever so slightly as she asks her next query with further caution, "Can you tell me where it hurts?" </p><p>Will can't help the slight furrowing of his brow at the particular word choice. She should've asked if or what, not where, unless it's that easy to spot the uncomfortable rigid curve to his spine, the sallow, sunken color of his skin and the winces that dance along his limbs each time he happens to shift wrong or tug the sheet too tight across his shoulders.</p><p>"I'll take it from here." Jack Crawford's voice removes any practically for Will to further answer her questions and he's as grateful for it as he is irrevocably frightened.</p><p>"Sir." The technician ducks her head, removing herself with one final glance at Will, the man does not return the look, opting to stare sightlessly at the ground instead. She moves away then, departing from the situation with a relieved step, treading easier the moment she's out of range and Will tracks her heels until the moment he can no longer see them without titling up his chin.</p><p>The lamenting voices of Price and Zeller enter the scene, a comic relief to the night's end as the two barter complaints like cheap wine, exchanging them with short quips and exaggerated scoffs as their treasure trove of evidence burns in front of them on its funeral pyre. It's the most natural sound in the world until it isn't. </p><p>The two go silent and not only can Will hear the moment their eyes linger on his person, he can feel them too, slimy and slippery like an otter's penchant to stay still. </p><p>His head tracks a path upward by its own volition and he's greeted by an expression like murderous thunder clouds on Jack's face. Will finds it nearly amusing. If only the agent in charge knew the whole biblical tale and not just the sloppy seconds hunkered before him.  </p><p>Again, Will's eyes find the gravel, hitching the blanket up higher on his shoulders, that garrish bite mark stinging against the whipping wind generated by the ongoing flames. </p><p>It seems they opted to let the place burn… he finds it almost jarringly poetic as his head turns to catch a glimpse of it reflected in the ambulance windows.</p><p>"What happened." It's less of a question and more of an order, and Will can tell Jack is holding back his bite in favor of his bark, "we had a full SWAT team, snipers posted on every inch of that courtyard. How the hell did he get away?" </p><p>"That sounds an awful lot like an accusation." Will scoffs openly, flaring his nostrils as he sits up a bit straighter, feeling a razor wire twinge up his spine. </p><p>"Will…" Jack pinches the bridge of his nose, exasperation and frustration echoed like the shielded helplessness harbored behind the minute shake of his fingers,  "I need to understand--" </p><p>A bubbling laugh steals its way up Will's ribs and he shakes his head with a watery smile, </p><p>"Understand <em>what</em>, Jack? I know what this looks like." Will's voice darkens like ink spilled in water, percolating through the entire glass with a billowing crawl.</p><p>The thin line between Jack's patience and his wrath is waning, creaking and cracking like the sound of leather gloves encasing an empty fist. "Then tell me what it looks like." </p><p>"I'm not so sure you're in the right mindset for that." Will's eyes slide away, back to that blazing reflection, the light reflected like orange pinpricks across his dull irises. Jack's mind is clouded by a red fog of anger, and Will knows explanations will only ping against the dense covering until the right word filters through like a match to kerosene. </p><p>"Jack--" A voice cuts through the buzz of simmering silence, and it breathes and wriggles with a silent sigh of relief as the soothing voice of Jimmy Price comforts its writhing form.</p><p>Will sits up, the blanket slipping a bit in the shuffle, it doesn't cover much as it is, bites, marks, and blood litter the pale canvas of his naked skin and again there is that distinct sticky substance. It tickles and clings to the backs of his thighs and his stomach, smeared and drying like a greasy stain in the grooves of his pores. </p><p>"We should run a SAFE." Price finishes his thought, tacking it in the air like a bulletin board in a busy office. </p><p>Will gives a humorless chuckle shaking his head until his hair slides against his forehead and across his brows, "Just because you won't call it a <em>rape kit</em> doesn't mean I don't know what it is." </p><p>"Always found that name to be crude." Price muses as if he's back in his lab, a small, easy smile on his face as he shoves his hands deeper in the pockets of his coat. </p><p>It is the first drop of familiarity in the rapidly drying oasis of Will's gauge on reality and it breathes a sighing sag of relief throughout his tense form. </p><p>"It's within your best interest." Price's voice does not lose that blunt edge as he continues his thoughts. When there's no clear word from Will the forensic analyst takes it as a cue to continue on, only the slightest fumble at the beginning of his next words, "You'll be… processed as evidence."</p><p>It's such a clinical and detached sort of statement, that Zeller elbows Price in the ribs, the latter exclaiming his hurt with a hissed ouch. </p><p>"He means you'll be listed as a victim." Zeller cringes the moment the words leave that overzealous mouth, teeth clicking and brows dipping as the forensic analyst shrinks in on himself.</p><p>And that word; it just rings out a little too loud in the air, Will's eyes darting around like a frightened rabbit to catch a glimpse of the invisible vibrations as they race away.</p><p>"No…  I'll be evidence." His lip curls on the last word, teeth bared to flash white and cruel against the harsh fluorescents, "Viable evidence." </p><p>The last syllable fades away and like the draw of a curtain, Will reveals the bite mark in all it's purple and blackish reds, a torn indention in the flesh that throbs with each heartbeat. </p><p>The smile he gives the duo is something akin to the one he wore when he was brought in for the  processing of crimes he didn't commit, it's far too shaky around the edges, a dipping quality like cracking ice followed by a few rapid blinks when he rips the mounting feeling of panic back down the length of his esophagus. </p><p>"H-he didn't…" Will collects the stuttering pieces of his voice in a bloody fist, forcing them back together, "he didn't use his <em>other</em> set of fangs." </p><p>Will knows if he were a dead body the two would be positively gushing over the prospect of a dental reconstruction that could finally churn up real results. They'd be all gleaming eyes and reaching fingers if not for the breath in his lungs, and the duo have the courtesy to stay their excitement. Live victims didn't exist on the dragon's itinerary, and Will was the first to scrawl his name there on the guest list, further still to place a second notch on the dragon's bed post. </p><p>In the wake of it he's not much more than a petri dish, a bit cracked and stained but holding together, he'd collected the evidence and now it was a matter of finding the right tools for analysis. He doesn't put much thought behind how he's dehumanized himself in that regard. </p><p>What matters is they'll have something that could garner them a positive identification rather than lead them to some piece of the dragon's costume. They'll have a name to that face Will sees like a fresh brand behind the dark stretch of his eyelids.</p><p>It's abundantly obvious Price and Zeller don't usually contend with the notion of their subjects talking back. As a result, Will is met with tense, abject silence, two pairs of eyes darting to the back of Jack's head, both fishing for the rules of convention and conduct written there before they trail back to Will.</p><p>Will doesn't meet their searching eyes, he finds the drying trail of blood tinged semen down the inside of his leg to be far more captivating. He's drawn to it with the gravity of a moth to a flame, staring until his eyes lose focus. The substance hugs the back of his heel, trailing down his foot where it dangles over the bumper of the vehicle. It peeks out from beyond the confines of his makeshift drapings in a manner that's far too silent, he feels as if somehow it should be louder, more brash and crude than it is. And so, when his mouth falls open a few times, working around the words, they come out as a raspy whisper, seeking to leave it all as undisturbed as possible, "it'll be an abundance of evidence." </p><p>Jack's continued silence is telling, revealing more than if the man ever opened his mouth. It forces Will's tongue to spill words on to the hazy air, leaving before they can be processed by his churning mind as he declines the offer of an ambulance ride. He does not crave the unfamiliar walls, the touch and words of a doctor or nurse as they scrape evidence from his skin and snap pictures with bright reflecting flashes.</p><p>He craves the company of the dead and those who govern and study them, favoring the quiet hum of electricity over the dissonant beep of a thousand heart monitors.</p><p>They don't offer him a change of clothes, they don't take the blanket from him, and Will knows why. He knows it by the books and yet there is a burrowing worm absent of logic that whispers deceit like omens in his ear, it speaks of disdain and disgust, of pity and it's cloying manifestation. It forces him to lean against the car door, forehead pressed against the glass as he watches his breath condense against the clear pane. </p><p>The silence is overarchingly awkward, and the desire to snap it if only to see what happens if it breaks is too great an opportunity to let slip.</p><p>"Changed…" Will breathes heavily against the glass, the word exhaled more than said as he gathers it back into his lungs and tries again, "I'm changed."</p><p>Jack affords him a concerned glance before his eyes return to the road. Will keeps his head against the glass, every bump of the car's tires ricocheting through him and it is expressed in a tight hiss accompanied by closed eyes. </p><p>"It's what he did to the families. He didn't kill them… he <em>changed</em> them." Will continues, watching moisture swirl it's blurry texture across that transparent barrier that props him up.</p><p>Looking put off, <em>murderous</em> even, Jack's fingers adjust their grip on the wheel, and Will can practically taste the recognition, the blinding fury of injustice. It was a fool's hope, it was Jack's hope, that left Will dangling like a fish in the open, thinking naively it wouldn't result in some greater consequence. Guilt laces Jack's words like a coat of polish on a steel blade, "I don't care what he calls it. It needs to stop before anybody else gets hurt." </p><p>Will blinks sluggishly, turning his sights back to the realm outside the car. The moon is full tonight, hanging bright and heavy on its tar stained canvas. He stares up at it with the knowledge that the clock's been reset until another family will be at the mercy of the Great Red Dragon. He'd done all he could to spare one tonight. </p><p>"You gonna be okay?" </p><p>There's a hand on his shoulder. It doesn't chase a flinch from Will with its paternal weight. </p><p>"Yeah… I had a SWAT team." Will smiles at the expense of his own terrible joke, Jack clearly unamused and he can't bring himself to rectify the damage or pull his metaphorical punch, "You should be worried what he's going to do once he finds Chilton." </p><p>He lifts his head, taking note of the way the vehicle slows, Quantico rising before them with its sodium lamp posts and sprawling geometric figure that separates the night. There is no backwards glance afforded to Jack Crawford as he exits the car, each bare foot curling against the icy touch of the damp concrete. </p><p>The lab is cleared of all extra personnel, that's the first thing Will takes in with clarity, the second is that he can't recall the walk there. He's just standing there between blinks, time lost but not in a way that speaks of a burning brain and the sweet stench of a fever. </p><p>"Just a precaution." A little paper cup is pressed into his hand, a blue rectangular pill nestled at the bottom in the most innocuous nature, "We'll um... we'll test for everything." </p><p>Zeller moves away, the best approximation of a comforting smile on the man's lips but it only serves to make Will's fingers that clutch the antiviral tremble harder. </p><p>Trying to stop them is tantamount to stopping the incoming tide, and he is left staring down at that innocent periwinkle, vision jumping and shaking with the onset of blind panic. Will feels like a rabbit who's been rescued from the snare only to wind up in the hunter's kitchen, and he can't be sure if this is where he's supposed to be, if he's allowed this after what he's done, after what he <em>didn't</em> do. </p><p>Dry swallowing the pill comes with the audible sound of a short gag, ribs shaking like the bent branches of a wrapped bush Will gasps for air. He lets the paper cup crumple in his fist. It's a pliant, malleable thing that brings him a small comfort where it presses into his palm. </p><p>It's control, small and tangible where it had once felt like something ripped and torn from him, once achingly absent in exchange for the sweet honey tinged cyanide of rapture suffocated against those bed sheets.</p><p>"You can refuse any part of the exam, at any time, for any reason." Price gets the words out like he's reading fine print, fast and sharp, going through the legality of it all with a shattering facade of compartmentalization.  </p><p>The gloves Price snaps on make Will's pupils dart and shift, snapping to follow the sound he watches as the forensic analyst lays his hands on the table, the contents of the collection kit laid out around him like some sterile halo, "Did you want to phone your wife before we start?" </p><p>Zeller reaches for his pocket at Price's sympathetic words, obviously going for a phone, when he registers the sentiment there behind the question. </p><p>Unbidden, Will's chest gives an up and down heave, reminiscent of a hiccup minus the sound, it's a single seizure of his diaphragm as a spear stabs it's way through the middle of his stomach, striking him through the core with it's violent discomfort, it's unrequited shame that spreads to the space between his toes. </p><p>That pristine white paper sheet beneath him is already speckled with what debris has fallen from him, and to see it gathering there like drops of ink forces a sensation like dry ice through his veins. It pushes him to hold out his hand and trade the remains of the paper cup for the firm blocky weight of a phone. </p><p>Screen bright and ready to dial, it smiles up at Will with that cheery technological glow and his thumb fumbles for the proper numbers, other hand preoccupied in the shape of a fist, pressing ever further into his solar plexus as it twists clockwise and tugs the fabric tighter about his shoulders. </p><p>The line rings, silence greets each breath between the ominous tone until the click of it being answered ends the brief wait. </p><p>
  <em>"Hello?"</em>
</p><p>"Molly--" Will's voice sounds so awful in his own ears, he can only imagine how warped it is coming out the other side. </p><p><em>"Will--"</em> there's the sound of shuffling, loud punching static that makes him clutch the phone tighter, <em>"god, I was so worried, I--"</em></p><p>She cuts off with a sound that rips through Will like a blade from navel to sternum. </p><p><em>"They said something happened… that he got away and that you were involved, and I tried calling--"</em> she gives a laugh, a thing that exists in lieu of crying, <em>"I know, I know it was a stupid idea but…"</em></p><p>Her question goes unspoken.</p><p>"I'm… I'm fine." He gives a smile, all grimacing reassurance as if she can see it through the phone. "You're both safe?" </p><p>There's a long pause and he doesn't need her spoken word to find the answer, he can almost picture her sitting there, looking towards two agents posted on either side of the room she's in a frown tugging down the corner of her lips as it wavers with indelicate tones of quiet distress. </p><p><em>"You'll tell me, right?"</em> There's a guarded air to her words, something that her quick mind has picked up from everything that wasn't said as her voice filters through the tinny speaker of the phone, <em>"Don't make me have to read it in the paper… please."</em></p><p>Will closes his eyes, cheek pressing harder against the phone as he tucks his chin closer to his chest and draws in on himself like a coiling fern. He'd rather do anything in all the world than speak his confession though the false booth created by two phones and a cellular connection. </p><p>Will knows what she refers to, not the physical story in its entirety but just the parts that encapsulate himself and that disguised pain she can easily sniff out in his voice. She wants to hear the truth from him but he doesn't think he can afford it to her, not without risking any further destruction to that normal, monotonous life and all its creature comforts. </p><p>"I'll… I'll talk to you tomorrow." And like that, he's prolonged it, slapping a salve on to a wound that requires stitches. He ends the call before he can get a response if only so she doesn't hear the sound like a bubbling, choked off whine slide off his tongue and trickle over a bruised bottom lip. </p><p>Zeller takes the phone from him before it can go tumbling to the ground, a question in the forensic analyst's eyes that never reaches his mouth. Will is thankful for it lest a single stray word shatter what's left of the shell that encases his psyche. </p><p>The two ask no questions of what they heard, they make no note of the quaver of his shoulders or the tight crumple of his lips when he's prompted to let that sheet fall from his white knuckled clutch. There is no mention of the scrunch to his eyes and the bend of his brow as he gives whispered consent to each step of the exam, as he tries to hold something of himself in even as it feels like it's being scraped away. It's like Sysiphus to the boulder, a relentless unforgiving task that often leaves him empty handed but he refuses to stop for even a second. </p><p>And they allow him that, they allow him his tears and his hitched breaths, pathetic and sniveling where they bounce through the air and echo back to him in angry, desperate howls. They allow him his neck deep wallow through molasses thick resignation, a slow, awful approach to the idea that this is something he could've prevented, could've fought harder to stop and yet he played into it, acted the part of the forceful hand and bordered in to something merciless when he placed his palm upon the Red Dragon and pushed him down to the bedspread with all the vengeful wrath of the lamb.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Participation</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p><em>"Then there's the simple fact<br/>That I was born this way.<br/>In such a tout assimilation of mistakes<br/>Don't you misjudge what I'm capable of<br/>If I'm heir to a broken will, I'll fall."</em><br/>Look Away, Dear Hunter</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hannibal will eventually make an appearance but for now this is just Bedelia and Will, and some not so chill pseudo therapy as well as a general lack of ethics and morality on Freddie Lounds part.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Time moves like a clock with no hands. </p><p>Returned once more to the office of Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier, Will thinks perhaps it should feel different. Pseudo patient and pseudo doctor somehow irrevocably changed by what was done to him, by what he had done to <i>him</i>, but just like everything else, it <em>hasn't</em> at least not in any way that feels as if the sky itself will come crashing down. There's something almost disappointing in that regard but he has yet to put much merit to it, he hardly dwells on it beyond the cheap addition of another end and beginning. </p><p>Where once there was a rather simple before and after in the wake of Hannibal Lecter, now stitched in to the frayed fabric of his timeline, exists a charbroiled piece of torn satin in the separate dubiously palatable segments of his mind that speaks of the devil himself and a great red dragon.</p><p>Will's hands rest on the expensive arm of the seat beneath him, plush and giving, his fingers play a small soundless tune, kneading against the surface while he waits for the first word to be dropped. He studies Bedelia and she in turn studies him as they always do, in Will's case he feels the leather under his sweaty fingertips, grounded in the slight sensation of them sticking, while in her's, she pours herself a <em>professional</em> glass of light wine.</p><p>It's almost a formality, he knows she won't touch it until the moment he leaves. </p><p>In this moment of quiet calculation Will isn't reminded of the lingering phantom twinge every time he tries to simply stay seated for more than a few minutes. </p><p>His attention is attracted elsewhere, distracted by the utter contrast of something boldly black and red against the demure neturals and tans of the polished interior. Will knows by heart that Bedelia's home is as inoffensive and pleasantly elegant as she appears.</p><p>It leaves so little in the way of visual stimulus, with its drawn curtains at his left and the remainder of the room to his right that normally he's content to stare ahead and watch her. Now Will is like the bird that watches the cat through glass, all fleeting and jerky, today on this first fundamental session that comes with the <em>after</em>, he can't seem to keep his eyes centered. He can't keep his mind clear of all the anxious inquiries and he finds the more he looks the less he sees. </p><p>And the seeing, well it always came so easy to him. Even when he'd been out of his damn mind, even when for three years he tried to cram it in to the confines of a dusty cupboard just so he could be perceived as <em>normal</em>, live and breathe normality in the hopes that one day it would shape him into something else and eradicate any taste for <em>ruthless retribution</em>; it'd been there. </p><p>So having it ripped from his hands leaves him rightfully guarded. It leaves Will lacking shape and color, his world thrown into some two dimensional caricature that is so awful and wrong it's vaguely terrifying. The longer he clamors for it with splitting nails, the more it begins a slow syrupy seep back into his psyche. It bleeds in shy waves against the sandy banks of his mind, lapping with more and more confidence after each outward pull but it's too slow, sluggish and reluctant and it never should've disappeared in the first place. </p><p>Will scrambles to slip back into its familiarity, feelings of safety wrapping him tight as he reaches to reset the pendulum of his mind, righting and adjusting it's swing that had gone so astray. </p><p>His eyes are drawn from the known to the <em>unknown</em>, searching for stark infamilarity to jumpstart his wavering focus of reality.</p><p>So rather than look up just yet, he looks to the coffee table and its unwelcome resident. A front page story staring back at him, one of <em>Tattle Crime's</em> very own, and he knows damningly well what he's bound to find there. </p><p>Unsurprising in all of it's tabloid shamelessness, the first leak to the press is an article written by the infamous Freddie Lounds. The flame haired sycophant herself had aided with the plan to catch the Red Dragon and now she spilled every damn <em>failure</em> for all to see.</p><p>Taking up considerably more than half the page is a snapped picture of Will in the back of that ambulance. He has yet to understand <em>how</em> she acquired it but then again the trainees we're always strapped and desperate for cash, easy pickings for some under the table dealings. Morals were funny like that, swayed and overlooked when it was entirely too convenient. </p><p>He thinks there's a certain hypocritical irony in the way that he finds the thought so distasteful, yet he's constantly overlooked his own ethical hang-ups where a certain cannibal in a glorified aquarium is concerned. </p><p>The picture itself is of a decent composition, framed by Jack Crawford and the swung open door, it's focal point is that nightmarishly painful bite on his shoulder. With its dramatic lighting and huddled figures, it becomes almost a baroque painting of some saint in matrydomic acceptance, displaying a divine mark to his doubters. </p><p>He reads the title, words flitting like crude fireflies against the glossy black of the paper.<br/>
<b>First Survivor of the Tooth Fairy's Bite; Revealed</b></p><p>Smaller than the bold header is an italicized one, <em>Is Former Special Agent Will Graham responsible for the escape of yet another killer?</em> </p><p>It is an afterthought, something tacked on after a semicolon, it seems half-assed and crafted with little care, but Will knows it's only ever meant to be a teasing, tantalizing ring of the bell to get the reader's drooling.  </p><p>It leaves his mouth dry, tongue feeling cracked and cottony where it presses against the back of his teeth. </p><p>Words written in vagaries and other rumoresque language float along the bottom and disappear beyond the fold. He supposes this is the only thorny olive branch Lounds' would ever afford him. Not going <em>too far</em> into every specific, she leaves it up to her avid reader to draw the final conclusion and whatever scraps the press conference tosses the writhing, hungry masses. </p><p>Still for how much it dances around it's not shy about the wording, the sheer bluntness and tone.</p><p>
<em>Following a cryptic press release by the FBI, a previously unknown victim has been identified as the sole survivor of the Tooth Fairy's rabid clutches.</em></p><p>
<em>Will Graham, a consultant for the FBI and formerly an inmate of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, was found outside the burning residence of the infamous killer. Naked and dazed, Graham claimed he had no recollection of where the Tooth Fairy may have fled to. He went on to further attest he had been not only been kidnapped, but sexually assaulted, details which had previously been kept anonymous. Brought to light, his claims are hotly debated, and there is significant evidence to suggest Graham may be withholding pertinent information about not just the killer's whereabouts, but his identity as well. Further on the merit of Graham's words, there is even greater controversy afoot about his alleged assault due to contradicting--</em>
</p><p>He stops reading. He knows the words and where they go. That winding, twisting path full of blinking neon arrows and the Cheshire cat's beckoning smile. It's a fall straight down the rabbit hole and it's very tempting to just tumble down, where the truth will never reach him for a thousand years and waltzing through the <em>Looking Glass</em> becomes an easier task than trying to stand his own flimsy ground, just living it's reflective and mirrored truth becomes something almost sweet and desirable.</p><p>He's dwelled far too long on the accusation; that he's done this to himself, asked for it, begged for it in his misguided decision to seek not just empathy, but intimacy in the mind's of the cruel and sadistic. He never took Freddie for the victim blaming type but then again... </p><p>Will bounces the heel of his foot, thoughts flitting away like a disturbed flock of grouse in the bushes as the muscles along his leg tense up until his tail bone gives a pitiful whine of protest. Eyes shut halfway in exasperated contemplation, Will draws a quiet breath into the deepest stretches of his lungs before he lets it out in a great sigh.</p><p>Stoicism won't find him here, and each attempt he makes to draw the blinds over his own eyes is only going to make the moment they snap up worse. Sleepless nights have left him too exhausted to care about appearances in any measurable way that could ever compare to the robotic glamour of Bedelia. </p><p>After a few beats of silence, Will let's his hands find each other in the tense expanse of his lap, body held arched and up, spine awkwardly bowed in the slightest manner as instinct declares he keep pressure off the <em>wound</em>.</p><p>Bedelia's hollow eyes are quiet and inoffensive, tracking slow and purposeful from the magazine to Will's face, it's how in the end he knows she placed it there entirely on purpose. Every ounce of her is intrigued in a static sort of manner, like some ambush predator awaiting the unsuspecting antelope to trot by. </p><p>He's hesitant to admit that his body reflexively tightens like a drawn bow when her lips part and words drop from them, slow and viscous, always with their golden drawl and distant warmth. </p><p>"I am obligated to disclose,"  Bedelia hesitates in that typical manner, letting the words linger like a breath between notes, important and without measure, "that I am not overly equipped for psychosexual therapy." </p><p>Will arches his brow just a hair at the blatant admittance and it's unspoken implications, "And you'd <em>refer</em> me?" </p><p>"Yes." She tilts her chin up, head held like the powerful arch of a cobra, her eyes feel as if they're staring through the back of his skull when she speaks again, "for the sake of your continued treatment." </p><p>"My treatment…" Will rubs a hand down his cheek and across his chin, scrubbing at the stubble there for a moment. His body protests even the smallest shift, it leaves him with a visible wince that he tamps down in favor of bestowing every gesture of callous disregard into the open air, "what exactly are you <em>treating</em> me for, again?"</p><p>"You were put in a position that ultimately left you with a crippled sense of control--" she states it so matter of factly, summing up all the refuse and debris churning like angry whirlpools in the crevices of his understanding, and she continues with hardly a pause, "and further still placed in a situation that stripped you of identity… <em>entirely.</em>" </p><p>She relents briefly, like the bowing back of a great oak after the buffeting wind, barely moving at all yet shifting just the same, "As your current <em>psychiatrist</em>, I am concerned how you might gain it back. After this most recent incident." </p><p>A smile dances like the long tails of rye against a pale blue sky on Will's face, lively and worn in its fleeting quality. They both know what they really have, and it isn't some doctor-patient relationship steeped in obligatory confidentiality.</p><p>It's <em>Hannibal</em>. It's always been Hannibal, both of them the last ones marching in a long line of intriguing faces and interesting minds, each more palatable than the last and Bedelia knows far too well she's listed on the dinner menu's closing courses. </p><p>As for Will, he has the distinct feeling he's the very last, the proverbial Jeanne to her Bluebeard, stumbling upon the bodies of all who came in her wake at the follie of a certain overzealous curiosity and the inability to continue disguising it. He'd almost met his execution at the hands of such boundless intrigue, narrowly escaping only because he was meant to witness the aftermath.</p><p>He knows all too well how the old french tale comes to an end, wallowing in the pre-destruction of what he'd claimed to be his life felt almost like the romantic hesitation of a <em>honeymoon</em>.</p><p>"I haven't lost myself." </p><p>He's firm in his words yet shaken in composure. Bedelia sniffs it out with ease, not letting the opportunity be left to spoil in the air.  </p><p>"When we are forced to make a decision," she pauses only to cross her leg over one knee, remaining too poised, she holds herself rather rigidly for someone in such control as if some unpleasant memory has washed over her, "is that choice not stripped from us in that moment? Is a small part of ourselves not lost to the whims and follies of another when guided by such <em>divine</em> hand?"  </p><p>There's something amusing in the way her voice edges across the word <em>divine</em>, to hear it uttered in such conjunction with its hidden connotation leaves a breathless chuckle leaking from between Will's parted lips as listens for the quiet draw of breath that Bedelia takes before words spill forth and her siren song continues it's winding path across his ear drums. </p><p>"Even a mere suggestion holds enough power to sway the mind." Her head ducks slightly, the barest chin drop that has the shadows darkening over her eyes, "It can be difficult to recognize that something <em>vital</em> has been lost when we no longer comprehend <em>what</em> we're searching for." </p><p>The ensuing silence is long and discomforting, it leaves thoughts to mull like hard grains between the pitfalls of Will's mind. </p><p>"Did you ever try and steal it back?" If it's meant to be some damning accusation, Will doesn't intend it that way, but the words certainly call back to a different time and a different place, judgment cast upon Bedelia's inaction while she set the hunter's snare around her own neck and pulled the pin. Acute anger and haughty distaste still roil low in the pit of Will's stomach at her slippery, slimy morality, sneaking right out of accusation when the hounds came sniffing in Italy. </p><p>"Ineffectively." Bedelia says the word with such slowness and careful rhythm, he detects nothing but a neutral reluctance, vague annoyance similar to spotting a fly is only seen in the way her temple jumps, "Even now I am unsure what remaining agency I have."</p><p>As the words leave her fine lips, they fall with more clipped urgency, as if she needs to spit them out lest her lip curl up and that skin tight falsity she wears starts to snap and bend; show her true colors as if Will hadn't witnessed them in the moment they became equals under Hannibal's oppressive thumb. </p><p>Bedelia takes a deep breath, a light sigh chasing the heels of it as her eyes fall shut for a heartbeat, and the mask returns with alarming speed. </p><p>"But in these fleeting moments of clarity, I am aware of what I lost." The color of Bedelia's eyes bleeds into the air, icy and chilling as she locks pupils with him, catching that fleeting eye contact before he breaks it. "The same, I'm afraid, can not be said of you." </p><p>A brief scoff shakes Will's shoulders when he lets his chin fall. He won't amuse her with sparse ramblings about his own sense of loss, of maddening guilt and a plaguing, gnawing parasite of regret. He won't feed her the intimacy of it. Anything beyond that which she deserves, that which she's coaxed from him already in the form of a magazine slapped so brazenly upon the table between them, will never exist in this room in the form of physical words. He'll make sure of it. </p><p>"You know as well as I do," a single peal of breathless laughter interrupts his own words before he starts up again with a small stutter to frustrated vowels, all of it reflected in the taut twist of his upper lip, "I..I won't be allowed a sense of self." </p><p>Will nods towards the paper, sharp sneer ever growing against the corners of his mouth, "the story ceased to be mine the moment it fell into Freddie's hands." </p><p>Bedelia, for her part, gives the barest hint of a sympathetic smile, a performative twitch as she recalls her own lies uttered to any who would listen and further still smeared upon the pages of a best selling novel. </p><p>"I'm…" Will hesitates, stewing in the abbreviated silence. He's not entirely sure what was meant to spill from numb lips, what easy remark would appease the psychiatrist or cross off that little box in his imaginary patient file that said <em>sound of mind</em>; but it's not coming to him. It should be easy to atone and adjust to the fact that he <em>is</em> coping, and that therapy is little more than a method for him to replace that Hannibal shaped indent in his grey matter. </p><p>Like a startling flash of lightning, he gives one blink, a frustrated thing that mirrors the tense curl of his fingers. Behind his eyelids licks the cruel memory of this morning as he woke in that motel room. </p><p>The scent of dusty moth eaten sheets had clogged his nostrils as his breath came to him in hard, desperate pants. A tremble like a cervid's knees when it's hooves slam into the frictionless ice overtook his frame in a quaver so great it creaked the old springs of the mattress beneath him. He could only grasp on to the flimsy relief that the officer assigned to his protective detail hadn't taken to watching him sleep. </p><p>Still, despite the knowledge no one is there, his eyes darted around the room with the panic of a tharn stricken rabbit.</p><p>He looked several times, eyes left to track a dizzy ring around the dim interior over and over; and still he couldn't put the persistent thought to rest that a ring of disappointed figures stood a judgemental council around the sweat damp sheets he refused to abscond from. </p><p>Each one more familiar than the last, the whites of their eyes were too bright as the downward curve of their lips only intensified with every second he said nothing, did nothing, every moment of inaction that became blatant participation. He was caught motionless in a crime he claimed to be innocent of, but it's committed into the disturbingly sharp pulse gathered hotly between his legs. </p><p>He would have given anything for it to be pain alone. That unbiased touch of stimulus where nerves only screamef for the fact they'd suffered some profound damage. That would be natural. That would in its most basic form make an innocent man of him. </p><p>There is no innocence in the way he woke with such a crippling sense of arousal that the brutal claws of its indiscriminate craving left him to clutch at the sheets as he drew them higher, as his muscles clenched and he refused the furious scream of his hips to be allowed their freedom. To be afforded even a tantalizing centimeter would be an unforgivable act, and yet his skin positively crawled with the desperation to buck up into the weight of nothing at all if only to miraculously meet anything. </p><p>He kept his lower half grafted to the mattress with such force that every joint along his form seemed to crunch and creak, loudly protesting as his muscles jumped beneath a layer of sweat and heat. Skin flushed red with the pound of his own blood, his own profound embarrassment and shame as it pooled with aggressive tenacity below the waistband of his boxers.</p><p>It's an outrageously ugly thing and he refuses it on premise. </p><p>Will spent an hour curled on his side, knees drawn up as high as they could go as he tucked his head down. Down beneath the lip of the sheets as he breathed in the humid air, suffocated on it with quiet, broken gasps like a dog sticking its snout in it's own flank, wounded and hidden, <em>guilty</em>. He doesn't budge until that damned stretch of organs and muscle laid like a thousand spiny serpents beneath his stomach uncoiled and languished once more at the bottom of its rightful, hedonistic pit. </p><p>It hissed and screamed for something he withheld in his nails dug into pliant palms and curled toes driven like anchors into the sheets. </p><p>In those long, agonizing moments he kept strangled handholds on the tattered remains of his paltry thoughts as they circled with statistical averages and whispered outliers, of the aftermath and its unpredictability.  All of it scrawled so deeply against the blackboard of his mind, it couldn't be scrubbed away. Messy and desperate claw marks, they continued to plead for sanity, a self death to his mind and his body where they seemed to disagree and debate so ferociously. It is a trigger finger held at his rapturous and frightening memories, a disappointed thumb jabbed at his continued search for such sensation that does <em>not</em> become the ubiquitously traumatized. </p><p>Will departs from the memory with a slight ricochet, imagery and secondary sensation fading like a lingering rug burn. It still stung, and somehow under her gaze it made him feel absurdly like an insect left in a jar with no holes. "I'm trying to cope with the… <em>unexpected</em> outcomes."</p><p>He leans forward, bracing his elbows on his knee, a huff of air pushed from his diaphragm as it seizes with the jolt of expected pain, stomach doing a diligent flip flop in tandem as he threads his fingers together and grips until the knuckles turn white, "It's one thing to be falsely accused… a whole 'nother beast to be <em>disavowed</em> entirely." </p><p>His smile is a bit self depreciating in it's sloppiness, and this is not lost on Bedelia, he can watch the smooth churn of cogs in her brain, caged in that bone casing as her eyes drift. She studies him with the sense of pity afforded to a twitching cockroach on the kitchen floor. Always an air of elegance, of firm power and sensuality that Hannibal lacked in his pathologically clean composure. </p><p>"And this disbelief, do you find it extending to your personal recounts of the matter?" </p><p>"No, no…" Will shakes his head, a bubbling spill of laughter found in the amusing way that Bedelia has misinterpreted him, searching in the wrong corner yet she's remained in the right room. "I've no doubts, <em>doctor</em>."</p><p>He draws the final word out as he normally would with Hannibal, each syllable said with a reverent care that slips right off the tongue and between the teeth. She merely gives a slow blink in response but if his eyes aren't deceiving him, there's something shifted there, a piece slotted in to place or perhaps something unmasked behind those dead eyes. </p><p>"Everything is…" he hunches a bit lower, twisting his chin up to look at her with a slanting stare as he waves a hand vaguely to his skull, "it's there in <em>brutal</em> detail."</p><p>Letting his head hang, he aims a jumpy half smile at the carpet, embarrassment and its unwelcome, clumsy waltz force his fingers to slide against each other harder. His nails catch against skin until pain shoots up the back of his hands. "This morning, I had to contend with the <em>absurd</em> thought I'd find myself waking up in that room. That I'd-- that <em>I'll</em> blink and I'm there."</p><p>He's subconsciously moved from scrubbing his slotted fingers together to rubbing at the center of his palm with the thumb of his other hand, massaging the skin so harshly that it scrapes at the epidermis and rips at each layer with the friction. Splotchy, angry red is left behind in such a way that hasn't graced his skin since he'd first started teaching.</p><p>Will doesn't stop, old habits dying hard it seems, there's no thought to the mindless movements. If anything he grinds the pad of his thumb down harder until the metacarpals start to voice their displeasure, "It feels as if I'm barreling towards an approaching curve. And I've found myself pressing the pedal harder yet I can't… I can't <em>seem</em> to yank the wheel any further." </p><p>Bedelia's fingers find the rim of that wine glass she'd left abandoned since pouring. Even as she picks it up, she only ever continues to trace the edge of the lip as if mirroring Will's attempts at fleeting stability.</p><p>"The traumatized strive for distressing situations in the hopes that they can retain clarity." She balances the foot of the glass against her thigh, head falling so very slightly at an angle, a curious little endeavour on her lips as she continues, "We impart some limited power if only to polish the tarnished pieces of our minds when we ultimately survive… or <em>don't</em>."  </p><p>His frustrated scrubbing halts and upon recognizing the trademark of his old coping mechanism, he forms a fist to cover the self delivered welt maring his palm, "No victory for the bruised and the beaten. Only comfort."  </p><p>He only thinks of how after those first few hours of evidence collection had passed in that forensics lab, his first true want for comfort was to seek out the company of his former psychiatrist. He stood there and imagined it, escaping and retreating into the normalcy of it. As if having what happened regurgitated back to him would somehow shape them differently against the sharp, rocky bluffs of his mind.</p><p>"Yes… <em>comfort</em>." Bedelia finally raises the glass to her lips, eyes watching him over the rim, unbreaking and unyielding as she takes a single sip and lets gravity guide her hand back down, "it brings to mind the <em>curious</em> thought of what shape your individual comfort takes." </p><p>"Curious indeed." Will enunciates each syllable as he leans back in the chair, fingers finding the arm rests again and dancing briefly along the leather like a single sway of long grass.</p><p>"Was it something found between those moments of brutality?" She presses the issue, a predator's sense of goading to be found between the syllables, "Or did it exist in the nurturing of a desperate illusion?"</p><p>He affords Bedelia no answer and with the final drawn back coil of a venomous snake, she lets the final question hit the air with an invisible fist to Will's gut. </p><p>"Who did you imagine in the dragon's den alongside you?"</p><p> </p><p>He goes deathly quiet, breath held like that brief moment before the pin of a grenade is pulled free. It's a peaceful precursor to indiscriminate destruction; he has the option to pull it, break and mold the world in its aftermath. Confirm Bedelia's thoughts like echoing applause to her sharp mind. </p><p>But there's a thrilling sense of power in withholding it, enough of an answer in the beats of silence dragged right into territory that would by conventional standards be considered awkward. Silence here is equal in opportunity to conversation and he can see the way Bedelia's eyes grow colder, haughty even in their judgement, narrowing in their attentive confirmation of her suspicions.</p><p>Will knows <em>intimately</em> that she refused to encourage what exists between him and Hannibal. In the same breath she chose not to intervene in its cosmically destined collision course. </p><p><em>That</em>, Will ponders silently as he watches her take another careful sip, <em>is</em> <b>participation.</b></p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Comments are always much appreciated! I always look forward to hearing others thoughts and feelings</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Abdicate</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>
  <em>Fear confined<br/>To the depths of my mind<br/>For what could be such a threat to me<br/>The conqueror of time<br/>Yet the whispers of a reckoning<br/>Have kept the spirits beckoning<br/>To look upon my crime<br/>Blood and war<br/>When the world is no more<br/>She's been watching for a century<br/>With hatred, and with scorn<br/>If you know the hunter's coming<br/>Then you hide or keep on running<br/>'Cause she's slain the gods before.</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Godhunter, Aviators</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The passing days bring about the annoying itch and ache of healing wounds. New scars dressed in pearly pinks against pale skin crop up in the violent wake of dirty nails and teeth. A lingering infection and a regiment of antibiotics begins to draw to a thankless end, and Will finds fatigue to be a poor side effect that he welcomes if only for the dreamless sleep it brings.</p><p>Each morning he rubs at his shoulder, the gauze crinkling ominously against the quiet air until he gathers enough fortitude to exchange the bandage for a fresh one. Catching the indentations in the tarnished mirror, they form a ring like the pillars of stonehenge. If he stares long enough, he can pick out the molars from the incisors, the canines from the bicuspids. They'll be permanent fixtures to mirror the ones etched into the trees that line the cold river banks, cutting unevenly through his mind palace. </p><p>Moving through life becomes the thankless chore of a passing spirit, something inhabiting a space he's no longer intended for. People part for him like he's Moses to the Red Sea, conversations become hushed and quiet, eyes stick to the back of his skull as if there's some flashy advertisement there. It's difficult at first, and it feels eerily similar to how the world withdrew as a whole when his heel hit the last step of the Baltimore State Hospital and he'd become a free man. It didn't taste like freedom for quite some time and this… this was equally as unpalatable.</p><p>This quiet scrutiny is somehow more devastating. At least suspicion was easy to guard himself against, he'd always been a topic of debate, a red flag, a ticking time bomb in the FBI's back pocket; fascinating yet much too unpredictable. </p><p>Now every set of eyes that tracks the sound of Will's heels down the quiet halls of the academy lingers with the burning, sickly sour vapors of pity. It nips at his heels and leaves him walking faster, picking up his feet quicker as he hunches his shoulders. Vague silhouettes pass him, visible from the corner of his eyes and further still between the round frames of his old glasses.  </p><p>Those damn glasses.</p><p>He hadn't needed them for years now, never actually did beyond a hint of myopia in his left eye. Yet he'd found himself making the drive home to dig them out from the back of his drawers, add it to the ever growing list of belongings he plans to pack for a rather <em>indefinite</em> stay. </p><p>He hadn't announced he was coming to the house, he didn't think he needed to with Molly and Walter still in FBI custody for the remainder of the investigation. </p><p>Will had certainly been caught off guard when he'd made it halfway through packing and the clunk of a tumbler lock being disengaged rang out with all the panic inducing clarity of a distant clap of thunder. He didn't realize he'd locked the door behind him at all… he'd started doing it on some instinct, feeling safer when he'd hear the solid click of metal that came with a dead bolt being set in place.</p><p>Regardless, it was far too late to pretend he wasn't there, his car parked rather conspicuously in the driveway. </p><p>The first rushed thought that hops across his mind is to lunge for his glasses. He rips them from the bottom of the packed duffel bag and wrenches open the case with fumbling fingers and a sense of urgency. All the while, he feels there is a certain lack of logic behind the desperate actions that nearly break the flimsy hinges. </p><p><em>Will?</em> Her voice filters up the stairs as if there's not even the barrier of distance between them. It's clear and firm, she's far more composed than he has yet to find himself to be.</p><p>And she has all the reason in the world to be upset. He'd had yet to answer a single call from her. The most he'd afforded her anxious mind was a single text, a blasé reassurance that barely made up for the stark ostracization. </p><p>He comes down the stairs before she can make her way up them, each step sending a spike of pain from heel to tailbone. A twitching falsity of comfort curves his lips upward at the same time it twitches and folds at the sight of her when he rounds the corner and starts on that last flight of stairs. </p><p>One more landing and a turn, there she waits. Not with arms crossed or a foot tapping but with an expectant, open expression, chin ducked slightly as she watched him through her lashes, she kept one hand on the bannister as the other rested lightly on her hip. </p><p>It falls limp to her side at the sight of him. And he can almost see himself reflected in the growing shine of her eyes, after images caught in the moisture across her corneas, it traps him and tugs him forward. It is undue comfort, something like an old desire for it pulls his heels down those last few inches and his eyes find her own from behind the safe barrier of smudged glasses and old habits. </p><p>He allows her sympathy to wash over him, delving into its twisted reflection across his own pounding heart as guilt eats him from the inside out. It tears violently at his stomach lining until it burns and bleeds great gaping holes and he lets himself sink into the soft, heavy weight of it. She owes him nothing, she never did, not when he thought he could use her to strive for something simply unattainable. She has no continued obligation beyond the one found in the ring he'd left on the dresser upstairs and the simple gold band still on her finger.</p><p>And yet there she stands, a mangrove anchored into the fine grained sedimentation of a nearly eroded shore, strong and sturdy despite such catastrophic erosion, she keeps the ground beneath her roots and the blue sky above her head. </p><p>He is a broken branch, carried by an opportunistic bird to be lodged in the boughs of yet another tree, no sense of belonging besides a purpose served and a task fulfilled. It's only a matter of time before the next storm knocks him free. </p><p>They'd used each other to fill some compulsory gap in the fallout from their previous stories. Pages filled with pencil marks, not ink, yet no erasers were taken to the parts that didn't fit, the ones they couldn't stand but not for a lack of resentment; it's simply for respect. </p><p>Will tucks his chin over Molly's shoulder and grips at the back of her shirt with all the desperation of clinging to something he was never supposed to have. She isn't his. In the same way that the moon does not belong to the stars, and the sea does not belong to the shore, he grafted himself into her life only to rend it further asunder. </p><p>He buries his face into that area where the end of her collarbone meets her shoulder, a midway junction that he finds himself burying his nose into and holding back sobs. There is nothing elegant in the way he shatters, the way he allows himself to finally bend until he breaks. Again, he finds himself using her and it only forces a whining cry from him harder. </p><p>It's a noise like the endless keen of a wounded dog, high and piercing, it cracks and caves on a sucked down breath, stuttered on hysteria as he loses himself in the rapid draw of air only to push it out of his diaphragm before it can touch the bottom of his lungs. </p><p>There is solidarity to be found in the way her back quakes beneath his fingers, muscles trembling as mirror neurons push her to cry. Like mourning rabbits huddled together, suddenly they share the same pain without ever having lived it so exactly. A learning experience for the wild and the hungry, it is what stemmies fear like a poorly staunched wound and it is what will coax him to walk away from this moment with a straight back and stained cheeks. </p><p>Crying, to him, always felt like it was some piece of short rope, stretched and pulled far too long. Left impossibly thin by the end, it made him feel delicate, fragile and prone to being frayed, tangled up in the messiness of it all until he cuts himself free. After a few long moments, he straightens up, the heel of his wrist forcing his glasses up to scrub at his eyes.</p><p>Pressing and turning, he kneads the sensitive skin, glasses creaking at the hinges where he bends them. At the same time, he lifts his other hand from her person, his fingers lingering for a moment against flannel, tracing the worn nearly pilled fabric before each digit departs in a synchronized withdrawal. </p><p>There is a brief, lingering moment where his eyes meet hers and he knows...</p><p>And she <em>knows</em>. </p><p>They exchange what can only be described as watery smiles, her forehead caught softly against his as they just stand together and let small bubbles of laughter fall upon the air between their lips. Wet and coarse in nature, to anyone else they'd sound hoarse and giggling, naive, foolish and <em>insane</em>.</p><p>"We'll be alright." She brushes a long, loose curl back behind his ear. </p><p>"I know." He whispers, eyes shuttering closed as he grips his own biceps and leans away, "you always were." </p><p>He thinks of Walter, young boy that he is, so distastefully upset and angry at the man trying to be a surrogate father. He'd asked if he was crazy and well... Will had little ground to stand on when denying it. But Molly, she always made sure to call him <em>dad</em> around Walter, the boy himself avoided saying it altogether unless it was a particularly good day. </p><p>He never had any hope of holding on to this, not when Hannibal consumed his thoughts and his dreams, devoured him even when he wasn't there, indelicate and entirely. Claiming he never thought of the <em>before</em> only made the <em>after</em> that much harder to wade through. </p><p>Will is a <em>burden</em> like a particularly enthusiastic leech, he had clung to her for too long and now she was scraping him off, returning him to the murky depths of the water which he'd crawled from. A merciful action in all its wonderful inevitably, he can only ever resent himself for letting things carry on as long as they did. It was practically delusional. </p><p>To them, in this short, shared moment, it is a goodbye; sacred in all the world. </p><p>The officer who comes to check on his wayward charge can not understand it. But there is something to be respected in the unknown, for he stands in the hall, hands clasped in front of him and gaze carefully blank. Waiting for them to draw apart the barest centimeter before he pulls Molly's attention away, sets her back upon her current task and leaves Will with a lingering stare that burns like snake venom against cold skin. </p><p>For all his cumbersome social lackings, Will knows when he's been dismissed. </p><p>He takes his bags and leaves, his burdens untouched and festering. Hers, now significantly relieved. It's all he can hope for, and it chases a lingering, desperate smile across dry lips as he pulls out of view from the house. </p><p>Winston gives chase down the long drive and Will spots that speckled coat in the rearview mirror. At the sight of him, he nearly presses the brake and throws the car in park. He didn't expect to see the loyal canine, he'd been boarded at the vet's as far as Will knew. He must've escaped… stubborn stray, he has a feeling of all that he's abandoning Winston is the thing that will be the hardest to forget. He's not that same man who spent hours in the dead of the night and wasted gallons of gas chasing down a dirty pooch, feeling somehow lighter in spirit when the dog lapped those scraps of jerky from his palm for the first time. </p><p>It's the innocence of a man he can't take back reflected in the black eyes of a dog who only ever understood what it meant to be undyingly loyal. In some way, he envied Winston for that. </p><p> </p><p>The next day Will finds himself at the Verger Estate, a simple, respectful request from Alana Bloom comes in the way of a curt text message that he can tell is something like <em>sympathy</em> for a man she's seen broken time and time again. He indulges her if only for the small familiarity of it all. If he pretends hard enough, it's almost as if they're still those same two people sipping coffee in his little kitchen as they discuss the matter of Abigail Hobbs. </p><p>Except Abigail is long dead, and the air has a quality like a brewing storm in autumn, less amicable friends and more allies in the same long war of attrition. </p><p>"Hannibal's asked to see you." </p><p>Will lets out a huff of amusement, standing while Alana sits comfortably. He casts a sidelong glance at her, words slipping from his tongue like soft accusations, "I imagine you gave him the Sunday paper, then."</p><p>"You were <em>assaulted</em>, Will." She stresses the word in a way that feels and tastes like nails against a chalkboard, acrid and abrasive. "Publically so."</p><p>Both of them cast a long look to the coffee table, an issue of Tattle Crime face up and bleeding into the very air with its jarring, blaring title and symphony of clashing colors.</p><p>"I wasn't assaulted." He sweeps his eyes back to Alana's form, any pretenses of fondness abandoned. When Alana doesn't immediately grace him with a reply but rather opts to study him, he starts to pace, hands shoved into his pockets as he makes a sweeping track around the room. Oddly reminiscent to how he'd traverse through Hannibal's office when he simply couldn't sit still. </p><p>"It's normal to be defensive." She keeps one arm draped along the back of the fine couch as she tilts her head up and tracks Will's path. It's how one studies a jaguar in a zoo. "Denial keeps us safe from the reality in which we find ourselves defenseless." </p><p>"And is this a professional concern?" </p><p>"It's personal." </p><p>"Oh right, right..." Will crosses his arms, nodding as he taps a finger against his chin, his voice dripping with saccharine sourness. As he speaks next, he raises a hand and cuts it through the air alongside his flippant dismissive, "<em>now</em> it's personal." </p><p>For a breath or two, he keeps his back turned to her, staring at some esoteric piece of rich decor. It's a painting of some equestrian scene stretched above him so tall he has to crane his neck back to even stare at the richly painted animal and the figure astride that proud back. </p><p>"You know…" Will trails off casting a look over his shoulder yet not turning enough to actually <em>see</em> Alana's face, he stares at some liminal space between the two, gaze set aside to stare at the curtains drawn across a too tall window. He gathers his train of thought as his next words tumble out unbidden, a small cascade of rocks teetering atop one another in the middle of a shallow stream, "pity doesn't become you, Alana."</p><p>He turns fully to face her now, curious to hear what more <em>wisdom</em> she has to impart on his ailing mind, he can feel it in the way she refuses to cast judgement but doesn't in every nonverbal manner that's impossible to hide. It's everything short of patronizing and she knows that, and Will knows she does in the way her eyes flicker briefly to the floor and her knuckles whiten as they grip the silver pommel of the cane laid against her thigh. </p><p>Alana's mouth finally parts, red lips like two lines framing her teeth, a flash of white so brilliant against the dark backdrop of her mouth and tongue. He watches her shoulders rise in a swift inhale, words readied on the careful draw of breath but she swallows them whole at the behest of another. </p><p>Margot enters the room in that way she seems to enter any space, domineering and yet somehow reserved, as if she seeks to be the single source of gravity but attention for her often is, or <em>was</em> something dangerous. </p><p>She comes to stand behind Alana, hands braced against the back of that expensive upholstery as she watches him, unblinking and unabashed, "Will." </p><p>Seeing her still makes something stir in his gut, almost adjacent to anger, it feels jaded in texture, shaped almost like a mother's wrath or a maternal sorrow. He often wondered why it took that form, why it didn't manifest in a way that felt more detached, wholly outside in perspective and fitting his psyche more appropriately, something like a father witnessing his stillborn child. It took him quite some time to realize it was because if given the chance he would've done <em>anything</em> to carry that potential for a child himself. </p><p>Will's eyes slant against Margot's like the first notes of hail on a tin roof, and his voice is equally matched in that quality, "Margot." </p><p>Margot's eyes seem to flash in the light for a moment, those notes of haughty playfulness etched in to the barest hint of a raised brow as she lets her head tilt slightly in purposeful acknowledgement of the tabloid between them, "seems you and I have more and more in common. First the same therapist, and well… you know the rest." </p><p>"Too well." Will can't help the way he shakes his head with a small terse smile. He can't find it in himself to hold it back, not when he feels like a stubborn ant under a magnifying glass, refusing to move even as the world starts to get oppressively hot.  </p><p>Margot affords him nothing at first, expression blank until that pretty face bends ever so slightly. It's enough to break the illusion as she lets her palm linger on Alana's shoulder. It's a moment of comfort, answered by a lingering look from her seated wife before Margot is moving away, rounding the edge of the couch in order to bring herself more readily into Will's playing field. </p><p>"How're you planning to catch him?" Margot keeps a respectable distance between them but he can tell she itches to move closer if only to lap up that palatable instability she seemed to feed off of, "you and I both know they'll just lock him up… a cushy cell, three meals a day. It won't solve anything, it never does." </p><p>She sits on the edge of an arm rest, head tilted to observe Will with such scrutiny that it feels like a knife slid beneath his skin. </p><p>He blinks, the middle of his forehead sprouting deep furrows as his voice dips into incredulous territory, "You want me to kill him."</p><p>Margot shakes her head, a patronizing smile jumps across her features, "I'm not telling you to do anything, but…" she gives a small sigh, a bored thing that errs into exasperation where it hits the air and practically oxidizes, "It'll stick with you. Unless you find a way to cut it out." </p><p>"Like you did with Mason?"</p><p>"I didn't do anything to my <em>dear brother</em>." </p><p>Will gives a small shake of his head, stuffing his hands deeper in his pockets. "Are you suggesting I have <em>Hannibal Lecter</em> do my dirty work, then?" </p><p>Alana grimaces at the mere thought of the beast being sprung from his crystalline cage, getting out into the world once more to fulfill his promises and sate his hunger. Margot retains her air of amusement, it's as good as the world will ever come to receiving a confession from her, "I'd say it was pretty therapeutic."</p><p>Her words, they remain in the air, hung just like low clouds about Will's mind until a small voice and pounding stomps of little feet clomp their way through the foyer.</p><p>A young child comes barreling into the room, disregarding any static cling of tension about the air in that innocent, focused way that most toddlers do. The boy stops short upon spotting the stranger, a thumb brought to his lips as he starts chewing on the back of the skin. It is a nervous habit already ingrained in that youthful mind and Will watches as Margot's approach acts as a soothing balm to her child's worries. In the next moment, she hoists the little boy up with one easy swoop, cradling him against her as she brushes any stray hairs from his face. It's a tender, sweet moment that Will feels he is undoubtedly interrupting. </p><p>His eyes shift to Alana, watching her sit up straighter as she in turn watches her wife with unabashed fondness. He remains the sore spot in the room, a vague bruise on an otherwise pleasant family evening. He stares and he wonders with no shy hint of envy if in some way he could have had this. </p><p>"Hey..." Margot's words are hitched higher, maternal and delicate where normally they bite and gnaw with every syllable. She mumbles and speaks words that he can't make out, none of them of course intended for Will at all but his curiosity leaves him straining to hear if only to understand how she can change from someone so callously cold to almost warm and jovial. As if the only things that brought her any human value at all existed in the distinct shape of two people and <em>nothing</em> else.</p><p>The little boy looks over his mother's shoulder, eyes meeting Will's as he cups a small hand against Margot's ear and whispers rather loudly in that low hiss of a child who lacks control over their own vocal volume, "who is he?"</p><p>"Just a <em>friend</em> of mommy's." Margot casts a sidelong glance at Will, eyes sweeping up his figure once before she turns away, "C'mon, I've got a bag of carrots down at the stables and a couple of hungry horses."</p><p>She departs, the excited voice of her son wafting back to the room and Will realizes that he will never know the boy's name beyond what he gleans from news stories smeared with stories about the Verger matriarchs and their growing heir. He had cast his lot in with the devil, and he had to respect the way in which Margot and Alana held him purposefully at arm's length.</p><p>"I'm glad you found this." Will turns to Alana, his words genuine and unguarded, "you're good for each other."</p><p>Alana gives a pitiful smile in return, finally letting that mask crack and crumble to show her true feelings. She gazes up at Will and all the while she does, he can't help but feel that she's actually looking down on him. He's cast in the part of some sad wounded bird and she… She is the passerby who offers her help if only to reduce her own guilt at having done nothing. It's a creature comfort worth indulging. </p><p>"One day, you'll find it too." Alana sounds so damn hopeful, so convinced that he is somehow set on a path destined for anything but that cosmic collision he's unable to deviate from. </p><p>"I already did."</p><p>And be it not such an odd occurrence that he can't seem to pinpoint exactly <em>which</em> figure of his curious obsessions he's referring to.</p><p>Alana's demeanor becomes tighter, words caught behind her red lips as she gives the barest hint of a sympathetic smirk. It's just a twitch and barely a shake of her head as she looks at the ground, but it's enough.</p><p>"Don't go to Hannibal." Her words are heartfelt pleas against the deaf ears of inevitability. </p><p>"Then why tell me at all?"  </p><p>"Because I know I can't stop you." </p><p>"I mean technically-" Will's voice dips into a callous drawl, voice wavering across a higher octave in something that sounds too much like frustration, "you run the place, Alana. It's <em>entirely</em> within your jurisdiction." </p><p>She closes her eyes, defeat cast like a soulful tune on her eyelids. "Because I won't stop you." </p><p>His renewed pacing draws to a stuttered halt and he relents that crushing grip he'd placed on his forearms.</p><p>"Why?" It's ground out through his clenched teeth and he knows the answer but he has to hear it made real against the hot electricity of the shifting air. </p><p>"I'm not going to patronize you, Will."</p><p>"Not going to patronize me?" He blinks harshly, once and then twice as he stalks a bit closer on indignant soles, "you once called me unstable and now you--" he laughs, empty and loud, a simple, hollow guffaw before he gathers his words once more, "you… you don't even have the courtesy to say it to my <em>face</em>."</p><p>"You've been through an extraordinary trauma--" </p><p>"Have I?" Will cuts her off. His voice bends and breaks like a thin branch from a sturdy tree.</p><p>"I wanted it." He looks down, a small smile like a thin moon across his lips, "practically begged for it… I put my hand on Dolarhyde and I--" he raises a hand in the air as if seeing that moment, before he curls it back into a loose fist letting it hang by his side just as he hangs his head, "I let him <em>have</em> me." </p><p>"You did it to survive."</p><p>His voice leaps from him traitorously wet and hoarse, following her words without hesitation, "I did it because I was curious." </p><p>"And did your curiosity cease at any point?" Alana's voice is hard, her eyes harder.</p><p>
  <b>Yes.</b>
</p><p>"No." </p><p>"It won't change anything…" she trails off, words losing their confident quality until they fall soft as a moth's wing beats, "...denying it." </p><p>He stays silent. He knows it changes nothing, just as knowing the dragon's name, knowing where he worked, how he occupied his reclusive nature and dedicated time to his few interests, even knowing his past, it changed <em>nothing</em>; and somehow that's the most disappointing part of all. </p><p>He waits and witnesses with a watery, detached expression as genuine, real and whole concern overtakes Alana. It is something that only existed in her <em>before</em> and in that bending break of their crafted hardened forms, the husks crumble to reveal the frail larvae beneath. In that moment they are sharply reminded of who they both were and who they've become.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Another short chapter, Hannibal should show up in the next one and that's when things get... <em>interesting</em>.</p><p>Thank you for reading; comments are always appreciated and they definitely make writing more worthwhile!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. For whom the bell tolls...</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>
  <em>"From the dawn of time to the end of days<br/>I will have to run, away<br/>I want to feel the pain and the bitter taste<br/>Of the blood on my lips, again<br/>This deadly burst of snow is burning my hands,<br/>I'm frozen to the bones, I am...<br/>A million miles from home, I'm walking away<br/>I can't remind your eyes, your face."</em>
</p><p> </p><p>  <em>Iron, Woodkid</em></p><p> </p><p>  <em>"Well I didn't tell anyone, but a bird flew by<br/>Saw what I'd done he set up a nest outside,<br/>And he sang about what I'd become.<br/>He sang so loud, sang so clear<br/>I was afraid all the neighbours would hear,<br/>So I invited him in, just to reason with him.<br/>I promised I wouldn't do it again<br/>But he sang louder and louder inside the house,<br/>And no I couldn't get him out.<br/>So I trapped him under a cardboard box<br/>Stood on it to make him stop<br/>I picked up the bird and above the din I said<br/>That's the last song you'll ever sing<br/>Held him down, broke his neck,<br/>Taught him a lesson he wouldn't forget<br/>But in my dreams began to creep<br/>That old familiar tweet tweet tweet."</em></p><p> </p><p>  <em>Bird Song, Florence + The Machine</em></p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This chapter got away from me-- so Hannibal actually shows up in the next one and he definitely sticks around.</p><p>Mind the warnings, some things aren't necessarily tagged</p><p>As always thank you for reading and any comments are greatly appreciated!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The ring of the motel phone cuts through the dusty silence. </p><p>It chimes with no answer, static and out of tune against the cheap, peeling wallpaper. </p><p>On the bed, Will is a corpse lain in a shallow coffin, fully dressed for his open casket gawking, glasses fixed on his face like a slightly crooked reminder to a life he once claimed. Still, the funeral doesn't <em>feel</em> like his own.</p><p>There he remains, gaze cold and distant, dull reflection behind glass capturing the dim sodium lamp in a pale orange, refracting it across vibrant blue and yawning black. </p><p>Hands clasp one atop the other, they rest upon his sternum settled right over his slowly pounding heart. If Will tries hard enough he can almost pretend that beneath quiet cartilage and bone there is no beat at all. </p><p>His eyes burn, moisture having long wicked from the surface of his corneas, but blinking feels like a monumentous task rather than one of simple spontaneity. He looks and sees <em>nothing</em>. </p><p>Sleep having long been chased from the echo chamber of his mind, he is left caught in the sharp, ensnaring teeth of depersonalization. Only half alive, he swims on the bed sheets of limbo, the room around him acting as the cocoon to a liminal space that lacks all taste and texture, meaning dripping down beneath the floorboards to gather useless and festering among the crumbling sediment of the earth. </p><p>Silence. He lets his eyes slip closed. Peace is found in the all encompassing numbness that bleeds through his limbs, leeches into his very thoughts until they too crumble away and mean nothing at all. </p><p>There is a quietly triumphant thing to be found in the creation of nothing. A humble opposite to the destructive force of his own imagination. There was more to fear in a single thought that graced Will's mind than there was to be found in the daunting chasm of darkness that occupied the hollow thoughts of the dead. </p><p>He sees himself reflected behind his eyelids, suspended in a thousand shards of mirror until he can hardly conjure up an idea of himself at all. </p><p>Breath draws quietly into his lungs, rasping against his ears with a brief flutter against the consuming silence, the peace of it suspended in the span of a few seconds until it's shattered. </p><p>The phone rings. </p><p>Will opens his eyes, harsh blinks and furrowed brows aimed at the dark patches on the ceiling. Lingering water stains contrast the brief flicker of an impossible face across his vision. The phone chimes again and Will's eyes stay centered, pupils expanding a fraction in a brilliant shock of fear.</p><p>It feels like five fingers twisting inside his intestines, fisting his guts and toying with the viscera, as adrenaline and a thousand other sensations sweep through him, feeling and tasting like an impossible cocktail of <em>worse</em> and <em>wrong</em>.</p><p>He watches the scar struck through that dangerous upper lip jump and twitch to reveal white fangs beneath, brilliant and painfully bright. Sharp in their lethality, Will forces himself to turn away, a hand clamped far too hard over his now aching shoulder, nails dug in like the persistent backwards hook of some animal, desperate and clinging. </p><p>Will hunches at the edge of the bed, feet braced against the ground as he's cast back into his proper part, his body feels like such a foreign thing to occupy but the pain is far too familiar for it to be anything but his own distinct brand. Grimacing at the full length mirror mounted on the wall, he sees his own figure reflected back-- alone this time. It's almost like an uncanny snapshot from the not so distant past.</p><p>Flannel on, glasses tucked in the pocket, he is back to being awkwardly disposed, looking like some <em>wounded</em> animal as his eyes take on an almost pitiful quality. He'd never realized how hard he worked to occupy as little space as possible until he'd started to depart from that sort of thinking, that entire way of <em>being</em>. Quite desperately he'd found himself backpedaling into those old habits, the egregiously safe ones he'd shed in order to become what was necessary, the sheep shedding its wool for the wolf inside, slipping into the sure footsteps of the hunter… or so he thought. </p><p>He has to wonder what Hannibal would make of him crawling back inside that scratchy and fleecy comfort of a former life. It'd certainly be laughable. </p><p>Picking up the phone feels harder than it should, it's just a flimsy plastic thing, as old as the motel walls encasing him. There's little in the way of guessing who's voice will come across the line, he knows it like the shore knows the incoming tide. </p><p>"Jack." </p><p>"I tried your cell <em>six</em> times." Jack's voice is like a sharp shard of ice across hot palms.</p><p>"Sorry, I was.... sleeping." Will clenches the phone harder, other hand coming up to press three fingers against the ridge of his brow, glasses clacking, a resounding plastic against plastic as he forces them slightly out of the way.</p><p>"Must've been some sleep." Jack affirms, sounding entirely unamused, voice void of almost anything detectable. It's mechanical in quality, something reserved for masking anger, or disguising patronizing tones. </p><p>Will's eyes drift to the alarm clock, a visible cringe tugging at his lips when he spots the analog numbers. It's only mid-afternoon. </p><p>A thin sigh filters through the line, Will can picture Jack pinching the bridge of his nose, in the forensics lab, a body or some other piece of evidence laid bare before him. Because that's why he would call; whether it be Will's classroom or his mandatory leave, it was always Crawford interrupting, a hunter come to collect his bloodhound at the first whiff. </p><p>"We found Chilton," Jack's voice suspends the next phrase, withholding it just long enough for it to chase anticipation through Will's veins, of all the feeling that phrase elicits, guilt is barely one of them. </p><p>"You don't need me to examine a body, Jack." </p><p>"He's <em>alive</em>." </p><p>Whatever expression graced Will's face is quickly scrubbed away, his teeth clicking quietly, molars meeting one another. His incisors continue to catch in a grinding dance as he works to process those words in the yawning confusion that's spilled across his mind. </p><p>Something like excitement hammers at Will's heart, it's entirely at the prospect of it. There will finally be something more to glean about Dolarhyde that doesn't come from the caged devil Will has yet to see face to face. </p><p>Yet a permanent part of him abhors the fact, that very <em>idea</em> of stepping back in that building, it's tantamount to lying down in a grave and choking on the dirt as he shovels it onto his own face. He craves the right to refuse like he craves the stretching, treacherous desire to seek out a dragon that's been melded into his mind, grafted in a horrific fashion that made him abhorrently <em>curious</em> when he should be anything but.  </p><p>"I expect you here as soon as possible." Jack's order leaves no room for argument, it is flat and final and it has Will biting the inside of his cheek harder, nodding his head even though the man on the other side had no hope of seeing it. </p><p>Jack takes the silence as something agreeable, he always did. He continues on with words that punch a splintery wooden stake of trepidation into Will's gut, "Don't talk to anyone until you've stepped foot in my office. Answer no calls, text no one." </p><p>It makes Will feel like a scolded child, and embarrassment at being scolded for something he hadn't even done burns his ears hot and makes his heart thud a bit faster, indignation caught in the valleys formed by lowered brows as he can no longer hold his tongue, "you're telling me you can't handle an interrogation on your own now?"</p><p>Will considers stopping there, but there is an acrid taste in his mouth with the texture of scorn. It demands to be let out and he indulges it with a rather venomous tone, "I'm not your dotingly loyal <em>bloodhound</em>, Jack," a shaky smile curves one side of his face as he continues, "I no longer have to <em>heel</em> when you order me." </p><p>These are definitely the wrong words and the charged silence that follows leaves Will wide open to unjust guilt. It makes him feel as if he did something so equivocally wrong, defending himself in the smallest manner, as if he's not <em>allowed</em> even that small measure any more. </p><p>Jack says nothing and somehow the awful gravity of that is worse than if he received reprimandation. Will can't stand another second of the itchy static cling that stirs up against his skin. </p><p>"I…" Will sighs, pressing air through his nostrils in a sound so ragged and tired it lingers like the haze from a wildfire. "I'll see you in an hour." </p><p>"Good." </p><p>The line clicks dead.</p><p>Will finds some small satisfaction in slamming the phone a bit too hard back into the cradle of the receiver. Altogether petty and childish, but gratifying if even for a split second. It's the little comforts he's started romanticizing the most.</p><p>~~~~~~</p><p>The officer drives him, <em>insists</em> on it, and Will is left in the passenger's seat, side pressed against the door as if he's a dog realizing it's off to the vet. It feels nothing like a guardianship, that silent tension working against the air and the space between them across the console. The officer's eyes slide to the right occasionally, peripherals checking to ensure Will's still there and hasn't gone for the door handle or something equally asinine.</p><p>It's all a very harrowing experience. It forces Will to meld his body harder against the door, wary eyes cast towards the officer with the same quality a rat hunched against the kitchen cabinets affords the human who comes to collect it. </p><p>The moment the car shifts into park, Will stumbles out of the vehicle, drawing out a heavy exhale that quakes through his rib cage like a bird banging its delicate wings against wrought iron bars. He feels less free outside. The creeping, distressing taste of paranoia thickens across his tongue like bile, slick and acidic, it burns and keeps him swallowing as if to work the feeling out. </p><p>It's surreal. Any stares or gawking he elicits from the afternoon bustle become background noise to a violent swill of paranoid delusions, thoughts tracking through his mind faster than a startled rabbit. He pays little mind to the fact the receptionist had practically cringed away from him as he checked in for a visitor's badge. </p><p>He didn't thank her. The easy motions of the tired old script are lost to him when he's trapped in a grainy film, coupled with concrete walls and iron bars, blue jumpsuits and blank eyes hovering over pristine white coats. Dull food and duller thoughts, maroon eyes hover across the line of freedom, lapping up the vice of his own handiwork. It's closer than it should be, looming behind his back like a bygone stag dressed in inky pinions. </p><p>It creeps closer, clouding his eyes like an oppressive hand, too warm and too heavy. Recognizable. For he knows whose presence last laid so thick across his mind that he could no longer think for himself. He's afraid of what he might lose, what he has <em>left</em> to lose if he allows it to overtake him again. </p><p>If he ends up back there alongside <em>him</em>. If it came to that, if he was left to crawl on his belly through the wretched mouth of hell, he'd scrape the very skin from his elbows and his palms if only for the broken illusion that he never ached to be closer. </p><p>Will breaks out of his thoughts alongside the gentle <em>whoosh</em> of the door swinging on its hinges. He steps into a room how he imagines a deer steps into a clearing every time, hoping beyond hope that the sound nearby is nothing more than small paws underfoot and not the careless trundle of a bigger beast. </p><p>The hush is instant as it falls over the office, it is the immediate quiet that sweeps behind the thunder of a gunshot. </p><p>Every eye turns to him, the inability to withhold the stark bite of judgement casts the whites in a sallow light, sickly and uneven, he can't hold a single gaze and his heels stay pinned fast to the carpet.</p><p>It takes altogether too long for him to tilt his chin up, everything held in the baited breath of a whisper, no one speaks and he can't quite decide if that's a courtesy to him or if the words have simply bled from the room. The frame of his glasses work to obscure his vision, a soothing balm against the proverbial gut punch that drives his whole frame to become obscenely guarded. </p><p>Refusing to leave himself open to the damning light of the situation, Will crosses his arms and hunches in slightly. A careful and deliberate consideration is taken to keep his back angled to the empty wall when he finally ungrafts his heel from the floor and prowls along the edge of the room. His eyes are cast to the corners, peeking around the dark bars framing his vision, there is no attempt to disguise cautious contempt for the unwarranted. </p><p>He wants nothing more than to be left alone but there is little in the way of getting what he wants, as if there ever was. </p><p>Fredrick Chilton is not here, of course he's not, but Freddie Lounds is; ever the epicenter of misfortune and indelicate taste. </p><p>For once, she appears profoundly uncomfortable. There is less of that slimy ease with which she commands the world's attention and plays innocent. Something about that is righteously terrifying in it's own right.</p><p>Her eyes meet his, upon the briefest psychic contact, Will slides his own away with a breath pressed too fast from his chest, gaze slamming across Jack's steely look only to get caught there.</p><p>Will's eyes find the ground a few heartbeat later, arms pressed harder against his chest. Anger rolls like a dark gathering of clouds in his mind, the taste and texture of it forces his tongue to run along the roof of his mouth as his molars slide against each other with a clicking grind.  </p><p>He doesn't afford Alana a glance, she's just as complicit to whatever this is and ignoring her was the equivalent of a small mercy. For a single moment, he spares the thin, sallow thought that perhaps her eyes will still hold that sheen of pity, as if it could ever die, not when she was convinced that she held the key to their collective safety. She, the thin barrier between Hannibal and the rest of the world, she, the demarcation, the self imposed keeper of Will's wellbeing as if he was never anything more than a pitiful thing to keep safe from the prying, manipulative fingers of the big, bad world. </p><p>She failed, time and time again, and some small gratification came with the knowledge that Alana will rage against her failure until the end of time, caught like an immortal fly in an indestructible web, with nary a sign of the spider come to end the sorry struggle.</p><p>It was as hopeless an endeavour as Will's own. </p><p>"Didn't take you for a liar, Jack." The words fly from Will's mouth on the absence of any sound at all, he has no time to regret them, leaves no room for argument as he steps closer and inclines his head towards Freddie with a sharp smile, too many teeth and not enough roundness to his cheeks, "That kind of manipulation I'd expect from, <em>Ms. Lounds.</em>" </p><p>Left standing there on the heels of terse silence, Will feels as defensive as a scraggly raccoon caught in the dumpster. He swallows against the phantom feeling of constriction, voice having hitched higher on those last giveaway notes of stark betrayal and what approaches a certain level of hysteria.  </p><p>Jack doesn't blink, however his brows draw together a hair. It's enough to showcase every ounce of simmering aggravation coiled in that frame. </p><p>He doesn't touch Will's words, no, Jack lets them wind against the air, the tension unfurling itself across the room like a great outstretched wing. </p><p>Holding Will's gaze, Jack stands and lifts one hand to gesture at that empty chair caught between Alana and Freddie, "Have a seat." </p><p>Something in this moment held an awful power, not quiet or righteous, just <em>present</em> and burning. And worst of all, it was not his own.</p><p>Will rocks back on his heels slightly, tilting his chin up as his eyes track the edges of the unholy triangle formed by Crawford seated at his desk and the three chairs across from him, one standing altogether too empty. </p><p>This moment is judgement.</p><p>A seat <em>reserved</em> for the defendant.</p><p>The barest stretch of a smile tugs at Will's lips with a phantom grip. He starkly refuses it up until the moment he can't, his chin falls with a shake of his head, huff of sardonic laughter spilling between where they part. </p><p>Reaching up Will removes his glasses, folds them, and then tucks them into the pocket of his shirt.</p><p>Without the crutch, that old barrier, the world feels noiser, appears brighter, crisper in it's unwarranted detail, that tame brutality of each photon pinging back to him in all those colors and lights. If he doesn't walk out now, he is left to fill the role of knowing manipulator, cunning and charmingly awkward. </p><p>It's who he is because they decreed it so, refusing to be anything else becomes such a tired lie that even he refuses to speak it. Playing pretend is the foolish notion of walking too close to the bluff's edge and beckoning the wind to come blow him off. </p><p>He moves for the seat, holding Jack's gaze in a way that is void of all pretenses. </p><p>Will walks astride the invisible prints of a self fulfilling prophecy transcribed three years ago in the wintery haze of blues and reds, a figure kneeling in the snow, maroon eyes cast back towards the porch as Jack himself presided over it all like a rather benevolent god. This <em>god</em> knew wrath and contempt, he knew betrayal and he knew when to collect upon his debt.  </p><p>A debt which was far overdue on the books. </p><p>Because the Devil's bargain didn't exist at the crossroads of Will's sanity, it lived in the nitrile gloves of manipulation, it thrived in the lines between aspirated breaths against slick kitchen tile, coexisted in the air between the leather couches of a spacious office, vibrated on the tongues and lips of everyone who ever crossed paths with Hannibal Lecter and never truly left.  </p><p>It sheltered in a glass cage, slumbering and mumbling in its thunderous sleep between the plaster walls of Will's foundationless mind palace. Will could have fifty doors between himself and Hannibal and <em>still</em>, he would feel as if the man was standing in the very same room with him at all times.</p><p>Sinking into the seat, Will does all he can to disguise the spontaneous tense of his muscles, the way he sits too close to the edge, his entire body rewired to flinch upon immediate contact even if no pain comes. To cover up the action requires that he lean back a bit too far in the chair and as he does so, he lets his hands run along the arms of the seat. His fingers catch on the metal arms where clammy sweat gathers unbidden. </p><p>He is the picture of disturbed nonchalance between two tensely professional pillars, only Alana comes close to showing the same level of <em>comfort</em> even then, it is far more composed rather than a forced, overworked bonelessness. </p><p>Keeping his gaze forward, Will lifts one hand to gesture vaguely, and <em>rudely</em> at the sparse expanse of Jack's desk, occupied by a single conspicuous envelope, not even a manila folder in sight, "since you've gone through the trouble of dangling the bait in front of me. I'll bite." </p><p>"Chilton's alive… <em>barely</em>." Jack tacks it on with a graveness that implies Fredrick Chilton did not escape the dragon with a life worth living. "He's at John Hopkins."</p><p>Will drops his gaze to his lap if only to hide the bright twinkle in his eye the <em>unfortunate</em> news elicits.</p><p>A satisfied smugness scrawls heavily across Will's features, there's little use in stifling it in a room of people who psychoanalyze for a career. Will had laid his arm around Chilton's shoulders in that photo for Freddie's slanderous tabloid with the full intention of setting something in motion. </p><p>Feeling it <em>finally</em> come to fruition felt like witnessing a moth crawl from it's damp cocoon, dull and bland, once thought dead for its lack of movement, yet a wonder all the same. </p><p>He had tied a fragile red string around its delicate leg and watched it go.</p><p>Will doesn't even have to open his mouth, Jack knows the question as he knows the tired script.</p><p>"They found him in a wheelchair earlier this morning--" Jack pauses and Will looks up catching the profiler's gaze as he gives a pointed dip of his chin, Jack's eyes darkening with his tone, "--<em>burned alive.</em>" </p><p>Jack draws out the last word with the whistling finality of a swinging axe to an exposed neck. Folding his hands on his desk, Jack leans forward slightly, that brow ever caught in an eternal furrow as his eyes move slowly to Will's right, "Sound familiar?" </p><p>Will looks straight ahead, distant and dissociative, staring at some spot just over Jack's shoulder as Freddie shifts in her seat, that fiery hair bouncing across Will's peripherals like shocks of heatless flame eating up the oxygen in the air. </p><p>He can see and smell it, feel his limbs move to strike a match as the intoxicating scent of gasoline barrels into his nose with each long inhale, each heavy, heaving breath, each draw of power into his widening lungs.  </p><p>"Only this wasn't pretend." Will spits the words in indelicate murmurs, an almost disdainful quality to the way he angles his head and looks from Freddie to Jack, "it's only fitting that our dragon leaves Chilton the parting <em>gift</em> of finally being able to try on someone else's skin."</p><p>"I wonder what gift he left you." Freddie side eyes him with a smarmy grin, always satisfied in the way that she was determined to prove his instability, his desire and thirst for sadism, his codependent psychopathy. </p><p>He affords her no answer, none of them do.</p><p>Will's lips tug back to flash a habitual smile, discomforting the thin tension in the air, his canines and incisors dance white against pink flesh before disappearing just as fast, a forced frown of manufactured neutrality obscuring everything. There's little reason to disguise what makes him appear guilty for a sin he's already been tried for.</p><p>Proclamations ring in Will's ears, sounding like gasping growls and profound prophetic snarls, he can hardly understand them for their shy winding quality but he gleans them for what they are. The meaning of them tiptoeing in the boundaries of his mind, coming back to Will all damaged but legible all the same. For the thoughts are partially his own. Chilton had to burn for his transgressions, the beast whispers, shadow growing, it <em>declares</em> in a low hiss that it was righteous retribution for a man who spent all his life so desperate for attention, never fitting in his own skin, always discontent with the sounds from his own lips, now he need not dwell on such anxieties ever again. </p><p>Will knows all too well he put his hand on Chilton's shoulder, christened him, or more aptly lowered him into the falsely esteemed position of a pet, hoping the dragon would come for the <em>dog</em> first. There's something entirely uncomfortable to be found in the fact that he came for Will instead. </p><p>As if reading the silence of his screaming thoughts, Alana leans forward, pulling that nondescript envelope across the desk to rest directly before Will's line of sight. </p><p>It is an invitation to curiosity and Will accepts, reaching forward he opens the letter, pulling the contents out with an exaggerated slowness, world unfocused where he has yet to readjust to reality.</p><p>The snarling, gnashing thoughts trapped behind his eardrums increase into a frenzy, nearly drowning out Alana's manicured explanation. </p><p>"His lips were bitten off and Hannibal received them in the mail this morning," there is a rather long pause, "...fortunately, he was generous enough to leave us the bottom one, after he'd had a taste." </p><p>Will doesn't blink at the notion of it and he pointedly spares her the question of why Hannibal was given unprocessed mail in the first place. Rather, he lets a tight flutter of amusement batter against his lungs and it is woefully reflected by the tight upturn of his lips and a sharp exhale from his nose.</p><p>"How considerate," the two words fall boundlessly sour in their texture from between Will's gums and with them, he reads and registers the words clasped in his hand. Seeing them for what they are in that neat, delicate script. </p><p>
  <em>With these, he offended me.</em>
</p><p>His thumb tightens, bending the paper until it curves and there's a crease in the pliable surface. It hits and punches, a fist of accusation driven into him, hotly so and it's unexpectedly jarring against the earlier mirth. </p><p>Will's mind quiets, a resounding jolt of ice ricocheting through his midsection on the irrational coattails of fear until it pools in a very terrible way at the bottom of his stomach, so unbelievably painful that he shifts in his seat, grinds his digits into the meat of his thigh, and forces his ankles harder against the ground.</p><p>He can't stop the small glance he throws to the corner of the room. There Will catches the glimpse of a lurching figure, the sweep of leathery wings and the scrape of a frightening tail. They greet the grind of his molars as his pupils dilate where paperthin resolve is ripped apart by brutal, poison laced claws. </p><p>Anger is the last ditch effort to hold it at bay, prop up the stumbling forces of his mind with a few sturdy branches as if he has the collective resources and time to pray it grows stronger. </p><p>"Are you trying to make me feel guilty?" This time his lip curls up without a hint of restraint, eyes locked with Jack's, he slaps the letter back on the desk, not withholding the <em>bite</em> to his bark, "If you'll recall, I was supposed to be the bait."</p><p>Will considers standing, leaving it at that and walking out before things could truly get ugly. </p><p>However, he is left with a rapidly dwindling confidence in his limbs. They've become sensationless, his nerves appearing to commit self suicide through brutal detachment, one after the other in an agonizing climb until all he feels as if he's being frozen alive. </p><p>Forced aggression taxes him. It drives his spine to curve and his chin to dip, hands finding each other in a variety of changing grips, one never taming the other in the anxious roil. Eyes set on the crisp white of that letter, he can no longer refuse the beast breathing down his exposed neck, every centimeter of his back prickling and torrid beneath the thin, flimsy protection of his clothing.</p><p>He feels watched, <em>pinned</em> down in more ways than one. It is a noisy sort of haunting and he finds his gaze latching on to the red painted lips, studying them as they thin into a line in the hazy afterimage of his peripherals.</p><p>Alana allows her fortifications to crumble when she closes her eyes and gives a minute shake of her head.</p><p>Will is distinctly aware it's not for him, not entirely and yet his mind grabs for it's disappointment and grafts it to his own worries only ever fueling his disdain for the entire ordeal and his blunt nails slip into the grooves where his fingers meet palm and he <em>grips</em> harder, heart beating in his mouth and ears. </p><p>Jack speaks, loud and clear as the impending rain across the ocean, "there's something else." </p><p>Will blinks at the vagueness of it, short little things that prevail the slight wrinkle across the bridge of his nose and accents the upward curl of his lip on a quickly crumbling facade. </p><p>"Something else?" He echoes, mocking Jack's graveness with a near scoff before it all devolves into a sharp laugh curled against jagged syllables, "don't tell me Hannibal killed an orderly as well." </p><p>It's a crude jest, completely false and uncouth, meant to be teasing in a less than respectful way, it remains a clipped and reverent rebuttal to something that's slipping faster than oil through the cracks of cupped palms. Will knows they wouldn't be having this conversation if it were the case, but far be it from Jack to be this aggravatingly cryptic. It only sets his hackles to rise further.</p><p> All of it is only met with a tangible wall of frigidness.</p><p>"I'm not your father, Will. I'm not gonna sit here and patronize you." </p><p>Now <em>this</em> is familiar, echoing back to a conversation in a barn, a sick man suspended in the rafters by bloody wings he gifted to himself. Will bore undead witness to a descent into madness among the cold straw, a dirty stage for an upturned manger. Nearly those exact words had dropped from Jack's very lips until Will bit back with his own choice of <em>rudeness</em>. </p><p>Will gives a laugh, a single chuckling guffaw that has his eyes slipping closed when he leans forward to brace his elbows on his knees, hands rubbing back and forth across each other in a dry rasp. He looks at the pattern of the carpet past his pale fingers, old words falling easily from the pattern of his lips, "seems like that's exactly what you're going to do." </p><p>Jack braces a hand on the table and stands, "<em>that</em> night."</p><p>The emphasis is astoundingly harsh, it rings with the tune of a gun's safety being disengaged.</p><p>Will flinches.</p><p>He has no reason to, Jack harbors no intent for physical harm, it's plainly written, easy to <em>see</em>, any looming rage is born of desperate disappointment, a mounting frustration, the end of a long, fraying rope slipping from calloused fingers. <em>A personal and prolonged guilt.</em></p><p>And yet, it drives a very real and embarrassing sporadic tension from Will's frame as if he's some pitiful creature, molded and hollowed out by fear. That scorching heat down his spine only ratchets up until it bumps against extreme discomfort, pooling across his shoulder and gathering at the junction of his neck where scar tissue rests wicked and knotted along his flesh. </p><p>His knuckles whiten, he dips his head, and with his eyes cast up, he feels like some dirty, scolded <em>thing</em>.</p><p>Jack curls his fist against the table, knuckles meeting the wood soundlessly, "am I safe to assume you told me what I <em>wanted</em> to hear?"</p><p>Will stares with his tongue caught between his teeth.</p><p>Jack nods to himself. To a profiler it's the answers between the lines of silence that are always the most damning. </p><p>Rapping his knuckles against the hard surface, Jack gives a shallow sigh and a single shake of his head, "now, I'll give you a chance to fill me in on what I <em>didn't</em> want to."</p><p>Will clutches to his silence like a lamprey to a dying fish. </p><p>There is only a split second of hesitation in Jack's frame, a single up and down sweep of his eyes tracking over Will's frame before he ascertains and forges on. </p><p>Will braces for the words, biting his tongue harder.</p><p>"Did you lie to me?" </p><p>Will prides himself on the flush of indignation that creeps hot and fast through his frame, absent of any mocking flinches or compulsory victimhood this time around. </p><p>"Lying requires an intimate understanding of the truth. I can't-" he licks his lips like a frustrated dog, peeling them back with a curl to let the blunt edges of his teeth peak out, "I <em>can't</em> just lie about nothing." </p><p>Jack's eyes shut in a seething rage, concealed yet hounding. A surmountable sum of past evidence suggests that Jack Crawford can do a great many things but continuing to trust Will Graham was quickly becoming the one thing he couldn't continue doing. </p><p>"Ms. Lounds." </p><p>Jack moves around to the front of his desk, leaning against it off to the side, as if framing some center stage he keeps his eyes on Will. Freddie occupies the space with her laptop between them. A terrible and sad home theater at Jack's hip, Will the sole audience despite the extra eyes. </p><p>They're only ever collateral, guard dogs, witnesses seemingly as unmoved as gargoyles until one of them stirs from their rocky slumber. </p><p>The sound of clacking keys and clicks resounds and unfolds against the uneasy tension of Will's frame as his eyes track Freddie's fingers, flicker briefly up to Jack's face and then slide to Alana's stormy silhouette. </p><p>Alana speaks up in that profound and careful way she's become typical of, "what you are about to do breaches a sense of sanity; you're angry, Jack, not cruel." </p><p>She looks to the side, and somehow it twists Will's insides, it's so different in texture than when they'd last talked at the Verger Estate, "allow Will to state his case before you throw it out with the bathwater. You owe him that much."</p><p>Will blinks at the sound of his name scrawled on her lips, a slack look loosens his features from their tightly wound grimace as he angles his head to study her closer. Fighting the awful urge to fix his glasses back on his face is harder than it should be. It comes to him in a violent wave, curling his fingers into the meat of his outer thigh as he defies the notion.</p><p>He haughtily detests how much he craves the old crutch and to have that innocent desire slovenly thrown against the crumpled edges of his mind feels like a mockery more than anything. It tastes bland, flavorless, reminding him of insinuations and the ashen tang of blame. </p><p>It's as if she's an entirely different person, or maybe this harkens back to her <em>before</em>, and Will can't help but be envious. His manipulation existed outside of the realm of conscious choice, rather it's intelligence correlated with a creeping moonlit curiosity, a vindictive and winding little thing that outgrew its glass box the same day the kiss of a blade split him open.</p><p>Her manipulation stemmed from a kangaroo court of shattering glass, a betrayal like a crying, weeping wail in the poison rain, dashed and crooked like shattered bones chasing a broken back. It was elevated and dangerous, a weapon drawn with poise, held slow and firm against the easily impressionable and he can't deny it's <em>dangerous</em>. </p><p>"Should I…" Freddie stands idle, interrupting that particular slice of tension, as her finger hovers over the spacebar. The intimidating logo of a play button sits against indiscriminate grey on the screen. </p><p>"Wait." Jack raises a hand, a simple and sharp gesture that speaks volumes and Freddie backs down, curling her finger back into the flesh of her palm as she waits. </p><p>Will is tempted to reach forward himself, the hesitation is sticky against his fraying composure and it would be disastrous to have it unravel. He imagines slamming his fingers loud and curt against the plastic, letting it all unfold like the rip of a band-aid, latch onto the illusion of choice. </p><p>Crossing his arms, Jack waits for Will's eyes to trek up to his own, it's a slow and arduous progress with no small measure of awkward, frail silence, "you have the floor." </p><p>Neck damp with sweat, Will drags his fingers through the beaded moisture, twisting the curls of hair that cling to the flesh as he brings his nails down to scratch across the carotid artery. It practically jumps under the keratin, pulsing and pounding up through the nail beds and his lips drop open around an empty phrase, "I don't… I'm not--"</p><p>He hates this. </p><p>That foolish catch of his tongue between invisible teeth, too sharp and eager, now reduced to mumbles and murmurs, pointless phrases. </p><p>Straightening his spine with a phantom wince, Will takes a deep inhale that stretches to the depths of his diaphragm. It chases along the tightness of the smiling scar and it bends the tender flesh of the bite on his shoulder, the strange absent ache of the bullet wound in his deltoid. </p><p>He doesn't look at Jack, rather he stares at the screen, hardly comprehending what he knows is there as if he's watched the water dash out to sea and the encroaching wall of water looks like distant, approaching clouds.</p><p>"Don't make me a liar, Jack," Will starts, voice sturdy in the way that a rotten branch is, "I did everything I was supposed to, <em>said</em> everything I was supposed to. "</p><p>Sheets of gold satin slide across his mind's eye, the sensation of a palm planted against his spine has him hunching forward ever so slightly. </p><p>He grinds his teeth against it, middle clenching against the invisible hold that has him bowing his head like a damn dog, "I am not your suspect."</p><p>Words don't find Will again. </p><p>"Ms. Lounds." </p><p>"You're risking too much, Jack." Alana raises her voice again, the edge of panic rings odd and wrong against the office walls, but her anger? That is altogether a familiar sound, "this isn't just about reputation, it's about preventing further complications." </p><p>She casts her eyes towards Will, as if she's not speaking right over his head. </p><p>"I understand just fine." Jack says it with an air of distant acknowledgement, "but <em>risking</em> too much would be allowing the Office of the Inspector General to get their claws into this one. We can't afford that." </p><p>Alana grips her cane and thins her lips, discontent but unwilling to fight for an unpleasant cause any longer. That was her fatal flaw.</p><p>"So, Dr. Bloom," Jack drags her name out, enunciation particularly sharp, "the evidence suggests that <em>he</em>--" he inclines his head towards Will with a tight nod, "--needs to see how bad this looks." </p><p>There is a draw of silence, a few stuttered heartbeats before Jack's voice hits the air again, loud and thunderous like the crack of lightning in the humid air, "from <b>my</b> perspective." </p><p>Will doesn't dare let his breath escape him, let alone his tasteless thoughts. </p><p>"<em>Ms. Lounds.</em>" Jack says her name with an edge that begets the static charge of an approaching thunderstorm. </p><p>Freddie falls right back into place with a deep nod, easy smile on her face as if the exchange was simply amusing, and to a journalist like her, it certainly would be. </p><p>"It wasn't me." Freddie assures and he hears her words like the peeling rings of a church bell from miles away, "contrary to popular belief, I have standards as a journalist." </p><p>Her words linger, her attention caught in the bubbling irritation boiling beneath Jack's skin but without a verbal confirmation to stop, she barrels on, ethics always looking more like some pretty painting to rip off the wall when needed.</p><p>Freddie continues, "I thought you should know, before you went jumping to conclusions. It's been circulating since yesterday, it even gained traction on major news sources. They've been working around the clock to take it down, but things like this tend to stick with a certain <em>persistence</em>."</p><p>He scoots to the edge of his seat, expecting to feel as if he's been stabbed through the lower back but the sensation never comes beyond the dullest scrape of claws on his tailbone, "what is it?" </p><p>He has no room, no amicable sense of patience for her.</p><p>"It's a tape," she says it curt and matter of factly.</p><p>"What's on it?" His words sound as if he's speaking them under water, he knows damn well it's not some confessional tape from the Dragon with Chilton as the star, not this time. The man was cast out like rotten meat, any vindictive promises the dragon had for Will were already set deep in the skin, raised and scarred. </p><p>He can't help but think, if the timeline wound differently across it's rusty spool that he wouldn't be asking these questions; that he would never need to and manipulation would come easier than gulping air and licking his lips until they chapped. </p><p>Now it is lost, absent in a way that a fire eats up the oxygen in a room, but a window is bound to shatter.</p><p>He knows, and yet he still entertains innocence.</p><p>"You don't know?" Freddie looks nervous, glancing between them all, reaching for some sort of confirmation.</p><p>"Haven't checked my phone since yesterday." Will injects a certain amount of guarded venom into the look he throws Jack.</p><p>"Well..." Freddie hesitates, worrying her lips in to a thin line, her hand hovers over the space bar once more, "I'd say you should brace yourself, but-"</p><p>She looks toward Alana with a crooked smile, like the moon hung in the sky but it's all the wrong angle, "somehow I don't think it'd be appropriate." </p><p>She presses play.</p><p>His first thought as the curtain draws and the scene is set is that it should be someone else there on the screen, sprawled out on the bed, looking dead to the world. Seeing his own slightly parted lips, the ends of his curled hair kissing the tops of his brow, slumped across a sea of violent gold, unbruised and unmarred, clad in the dark clothes of innocence. Without sin, it is peacefully voyeuristic.</p><p>It should be someone else.</p><p>Will watches Dolarhyde splash water across his slack face, he tastes the chill on his own lips, licks up its moisture. Stuttered breaths echo through the speakers, Will parrots them. </p><p>It was supposed to be someone else.</p><p>Dolarhyde's figure slithers on to the end of the bed, the dragon hitching a ride on his back. It is there with every claw that reaches forward and hooks the air, Will feels his palms slip, frictionless in their retreat.</p><p>Gold and red, sweat sanctified into the grooves of his hands, pushing beneath the nail beds.</p><p>It should've been Chilton. </p><p>The dragon's words ring like the church bell in a plague ravaged town, a death for each awful tone, a promise for each winding toll. It's bellowing chime never stops. </p><p>No, it <em>would've</em> been Chilton.</p><p>Will sees the dragon surge forward, muscles rippling beneath miles of ink. He tastes blood on his lips, feels fangs curve through his flesh, his fingers grip the arms of the chair and he feels the distant ghost of hot skin and shorn hair in the cold bite of metal. </p><p>
  <em>This couldn't happen.</em>
</p><p>His heart pounds without mercy in the crumbling cavity of his chest, a blackhole sucking inward.</p><p>
  <em>It didn't.</em>
</p><p>The dragon's teeth tear into him. Will hunches forward, a breath shot from his lips as he clutches his shoulder, blunt nails ground through the fabric, bunching it as the past collides with the present.</p><p>
  <em>It won't.</em>
</p><p>The hot snorting breath on the nape of his neck turns into the dangerous scrape of teeth, Will slides his hand up to cover the exposed flesh. He tries desperately to block it out, but through the gaps in his fingers it continues, chasing goosebumps across his skin, every hair standing on end, his middle is clenched so tight he feels nauseous and he ducks his head, trying to escape the invisible threat. It only brings him closer to the screen. </p><p>
  <em>It did.</em>
</p><p>Will watches as he pushes Dolarhyde down to the bedspread, a wicked lamb lapping up that smoking breath from the dragon's lips. </p><p>"Did you know him?" </p><p>He doesn't look at Jack, Will is stuck seeing and feeling, remembering in a way that feels dirty, slippery, so out of his control he curls his toes against the sensation.</p><p>"Did you know his name?" Jack pushes.</p><p>He's trying to be more specific, and Will clenches his jaw harder, head dipping down. It feels like pulling teeth except Will's gums are empty, blood and tissue left behind as Jack pulls and twists at the roots left behind, chips away at jaw bone until it threatens to fracture.  </p><p>"You knew Reba Wilson."</p><p>Will's lips part with a shaky breath, "I knew… I knew her name. I didn't know…" he draws in a sharp breath, tongue feeling as if it's clamped between someone else's teeth. He gestures at the screen with a palm, lifting it only a few inches from its resting place, "not yet." </p><p>"You didn't know him before this, maybe in passing? A face on the street?" </p><p>Will shakes his head, but his eyes stay centered. </p><p>"This--" Jack's chin dips towards the screen, the imagery remains blatantly pornographic, violent and yet it elicits only a ratcheting discomfort from the gathered individuals, stinking of trust gone sour, "is the first time you've ever met, you've got no prior <em>engagements</em>?" </p><p>Will feels his lip tremble, pulling up and tight before crumpling into a frown, over and over. He let's it shake there, aware of how easily he could scrape it off completely, keep his face blank and unmoved, damned if he feels, but here he does. Here he <em>has</em> to. </p><p>He knows how this looks, how it sounds, how it tosses him to the center of a greasy stage, a raw succulent cut of meat that the pigs of the audience clamber over each other to sink their clipped tusks into.</p><p>"You know nothing else about our dragon?" </p><p>The question remains unanswered. </p><p>The longer Will watches, the harder he holds his tongue, the easier it is to feel nothing at all. He cuts out the residual, lingering panic and distress from the bodies around him, cuts it out of his own chest with a dull scapel breaking away the sticky tendrils and brittle bones of his chest, the cartilage of his ribs, the slowing thud of his heart. He slits it open and lets it bleed in a pool at his feet. </p><p>He knows it'll follow him out of the office on the sticky heels of his shoes, but that is for later. </p><p>Anger is easy, wrath is familiar, retribution is an intense comfort and he prods and pokes it. Electrifies it until the part of his brain responsible for mercy quiets, the performance of morality dies with a weak wail and the hunter emerges with a finger itching for the trigger, eager for the knife, baying for blood in a sick reflection of lust. </p><p>Will sees himself, caught in the pixels of the screen, he meets his own eyes, reflects his own confusion, his own dawning realization, a breath of air before being plunged back beneath the surface. He witnesses and he feels. </p><p>It touches every nerve like a knife cut across his gut, an easy shocking slide as his own glazed eyes are forced from view behind the expanse of Dolarhyde's back.</p><p>"I need to hear it in your words, Will." Jack's voice rises, patience burns short, "unless you want to leave here in handcuffs." </p><p>He's back in that room again, retreating as rapidly as he can stay afloat, the dark water sucks him down and his lifeline slips through sliced palms that paint the ocean red. The desperate cogs of his coping mechanisms grind to a halt. Panic catches in both throats, here and there, it tastes like the bubbling acrid acid that comes with losing control entirely. He feels everything. They feel everything. </p><p>"Enough." Alana's swift hand slams the laptop closed, "that's enough."</p><p>She ends it's horrible sound and light. Standing in front of Will now, she looks down at him with a blatant, heavy concern, ever the just goddess backed by her fiery retribution, Jack doesn't try to argue.</p><p>Will surfaces from the depths of his mind, sucking in a sharp breath as he claws his trembling form out of the dark well of his mind. </p><p>His eyes move up, two devils shaped like angels stand before him, either side of a dragon locked in the metal frame of a laptop between them. </p><p>Jack sighs, a long and frustrated thing, it drips like damp leaves, "Will."</p><p>He's suffocating face down in that pillow all over again, all side effects of pleasure completely absent. It's just drowning. </p><p>"I don't know him." Will spits the words feeling as if they've been scraped from his tongue without consent, "I don't <em>want</em> to know him." </p><p>He doesn't shy away from the pointed, jabbing finger that the words thrust crudely in Jack's face. He won't smile kind and sweet for the man who put him here. </p><p>Jack looks away, pulling his lips into a tight grimace before he speaks, "you're dismissed, Lounds."  </p><p>Freddie's eyes linger on Will, he feels them intimately, curious and lapping up every tiny reaction, every line of his body like they're sweet vices spilled on the ground. She'll write an article, if Will's sure about anything, it's that, because no amount of charges in the world would ever stick to her frictionless remorse. </p><p>After a long, treacherous heartbeat, she gathers her things and leaves, lingering only for a moment before an officer escorts her out.  </p><p>In her wake, Will finds himself placed under quiet scrutiny. On some shallow instinct, he caves, he curls in with his fingers gripped in his hair, elbows braced on his knees. His breathes are harsh, he fights the urge to lose himself in feral ferocity or succumb to the soft whisper of blinding, inescapable panic. Thinking far too much of the wrong outcomes, of the after, when there's only one thing he should be chasing.</p><p>Will narrows focus, a scrawny coyote to the biggest buck of the herd, overzealous, eager, <b>hungry.</b> Starved by some naive belief he'd been snapping the grass for far too long, letting it coat his tongue and his teeth green, never turning to the give of warm flesh until now; until it dripped hot and heavy in his mind's eye. <em>Red</em> and wonderful, something Great.</p><p>Nothing in this moment is more clear; the red dragon will never stop, not unless he recruits a bigger beast to help him kill it. </p><p>He has to <em>die</em>.</p><p>It didn't matter the cost or the casualty, it didn't matter if Dolarhyde ever understood why, he simply had to be put down. </p><p>A rabid dog doesn't have to look down the barrel, it only has to eat the bullet.</p><p>"I have to speak with Hannibal." </p><p>"No," Jack's refusal is loud, ringing in the quiet aftermath, "the last thing we need is for you to be seen fraternizing with an old <em>friend</em>." </p><p>"Will's right." Alana says, ever the facsimile of comfort, although it contests her previous sentiments and is coupled with a reserved sense of defeat. Still, she extends it to him after <em>everything</em>, as if somehow he still deserves it and her brand of mercy. </p><p>It stirs up a callous sense of envy in Will's chest, that despite her own reckoning, her violent, back breaking disillusionment, her smothered trust and crippled kindness so much of her remains the same. </p><p>"Hannibal knows far more than he'll ever reveal to either of us," she explains, giving the slightest pause, "It's his game, not ours, we simply have to play it." </p><p>Will keeps his eyes on his hands, now clasped so tightly around each other that the skin blanches in some places, darkens in others almost like a bruise. His forearms shake and his temple jumps. </p><p>Jack backs down with a single sigh, a shake of his head following, his knuckles rap against the desk once before he relents without a word. </p><p>"I'll have something arranged," Alana reassures.</p><p>Will never acknowledges it in any tangible way, he is nothing more than a passing spirit there, his nod caught between a rough smile and a worn frown when he stands to leave. </p><p>Alana walks him out, but it doesn't feel like freedom. </p><p>~~~~~~~~</p><p>He's escorted back <em>home</em>, to his dusty, claustrophobic little motel room. </p><p>The officer is stationed outside the door and he stays there, he never even knocked, never inquired when the sound of shattering glass and shouts filled the air. Will is just that old saying, the one about trees and falling, how they never exist in the first place. </p><p>At some point he finds himself collapsed atop the comforter, he can't remember when only that he's suddenly there floating on the plush sea, it cradles him, an aching comfort that he doesn't fight. Not when every shadow looms and stretches, leathery wings furled open and a tail threatens to wrap around his ankle, drag him off the bed and into the dark. </p><p>Will draws his feet up higher at the thought, curving his spine tighter, he tucks bandaged knuckles harder into his sternum, pushed up under his chin he doesn't try to escape the fetal curl. </p><p>Poorly wrapped, the pink bleeds easily through tan, the blood pools hot and warm, alive. </p><p>He stares at the motel window.</p><p>It's just a different cell, different handcuffs, different accusations, the same awful breed of intrinsic loss. Confusion, wasting away in a headspace filled with tar slick palms and morals tacked to a spinning compass absent of true north.</p><p>The TV plays softly in the background, bright lights cast across blank eyes, too dry and too red, blank. It's muted, hollow and mechanical, but he can hear the words almost as if he's a switchboard operator, asking questions, begging to find the right channel but his hands only ever stay smashing the same keys, flipping the same switches.</p><p>He is the pariah in the passenger seat, his hands out to grab the wheel, but he'll never find it.</p><p>Mirrored glass litters the floor, reflecting the TV like a broken disco ball, it dashes across the ceiling broken and jagged in its silver light. </p><p>His phone chimes from the floor, having leaped off the side table after ringing for the hundredth time. The bright screen still flashes, over and over, the vibration whirrs and whirrs and whirrs away, spinning the device in little circles until it's nearly scooting under the bed.</p><p>He doesn't remember closing his eyes.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>